Ouroboros: the Endless Cycle
by WANMWAD
Summary: Judy is the first rabbit to become a member of the City Guard, the law enforcement group that keeps the magical city-state of Zootopia running smoothly. Her first real assignment should be simple: serving as a courier. She quickly finds, however, that she's been assigned to escort a mysterious fox alchemist and that not everything may be as it seems.
1. Chapter 1

Judy couldn't remember the first time she had seen the Middle Wall any more than she could remember the first breath she had taken. It had simply always been there, a gleaming white ribbon that defined the edge of everything she had ever known. Even as she approached the Middle Wall, preparing to go past it for the first time in her life, it looked no different from how it had when she was a kit. From the outermost field of the Tochtli Barony it was perhaps twenty miles to the gentle curve of the Middle Wall, and at that distance it appeared almost completely perfect, the smooth white marred only by the War Gate, which appeared as a grayish smudge. Judy had gone to War Gate when she was younger, too, and as when she had first seen it up close it took her breath away.

The gate was simply enormous, easily more than forty feet tall and twenty feet wide, and yet it wasn't even a third as tall as the wall itself. The doors were the same white stone as the surrounding wall, but both had been worked into an elaborate bas relief carving of the conquest. Stone figures so realistically worked that they looked apt to step out and walk around depicted the entire war, the left door depicting everything from the breaching of the Outer and Middle Walls to Ocelotl's abdication. As a kit, the sheer scale of the violence shown had been difficult to imagine, the early advances of an invading army numbering in the thousands finally being met in kind at the Inner Wall. Claiming what were now the Outer and Middle Baronies was said to have been done in less than a day, the combination of surprise and unfamiliar magic allowing the invaders to hold all of Zootopia's farmlands before a defense could be mounted. Even then, in the face of overwhelming odds, the defenders had held the Inner Baronies for almost a year under constant siege before finally surrendering. Emperor Ocelotl was centered perfectly between the two doors, and while the left side showed him as he must have been as he surrendered, gaunt and wasted from starving alongside his subjects, it was the right side that Judy had appreciated as a kit and appreciated even more viewing it again as an adult.

The right door showed Ocelotl as he had been immediately before his death some twenty years after abdicating the throne, the elaborate costume he had worn as an emperor replaced with the far simpler garb of a duke, and the rest of the door was consumed by depictions of how the two societies, natives and invaders, had come together and rebuilt the city-state. There were images of the sharing of farming techniques to improve yields, of the elaborate additions made to the buildings at the heart of the city-state, and even of the two societies sharing their knowledge of the healing arts to cure the plague that had devastated both in the early years of their cooperation. The door even showed its own construction, detailing how the enormous hole that alchemists had put in the wall had been turned into a gate that memorialized all of the mammals involved. Judy's eyes traced over the images that had been burned into her memory years ago, from the banning of mammal sacrifice to the elevation of prey from little more than slaves to true equals. One of her distant ancestors, the first Baron of Tochtli, was shown, his face somehow both humble and proud as he accepted his responsibility from King Oveja I with the other newly minted barons.

At the bottom of the door, though, was the image that Judy had long held in mind, because it showed the very first members of the Zootopia City Guard. Their centuries-old uniforms were somewhat different from the one that she wore, but the resemblance was unmistakable even when comparing the uncolored stone to reality. Her steel breastplate was much less ornamented than theirs, and she had only two feathers attached to her bracelets rather than the half-dozen the first members of the City Guard had worn. The quilted tunic and trousers she wore were also significantly less bulky, and she had a belt of quauhxicallis at her waist that would have been the envy of any of those early guards. The most significant piece of her uniform that the first generation of guards lacked, however, was the golden torc at her throat with its single obsidian starburst stud that announced her position and rank. Even though she had worn it for nearly a month, Judy's paw sometimes still went to the torc, as if to confirm that it was still there. There had been plenty of mammals who had said that a rabbit could never join the City Guard, but she had never forgotten how inspired she had been to see the War Gate. Seeing it again, on her first official assignment that used her as more than just a warm body that could hold a spear, made her heart well up with pride.

"You the courier?" a voice suddenly asked, completely breaking Judy's line of thought.

She turned as quickly as she could to face the member of the City Guard who had been waiting for her arrival, trying not to stumble under the weight of her pack. Travelling from the center of Zootopia to the edge of the Middle Baronies had been a journey of about a day, but reaching the settlement in the ruins of the Outer Baronies would take at least three and she had packed accordingly. "Yessir," Judy replied, giving the pig a sharp salute, "Ensign Tochtli, reporting for duty."

He returned her salute in a far more sloppy fashion, more of a vague motion of his arm than anything else, but his very appearance would have gotten him chewed out in the city center. The pig wasn't wearing his steel breastplate and the quilted tunic that strained at his ample gut was rumpled and had a number of curious stains on it. The feathers at his wrists were sadly sparse looking and even the golden torc at his neck looked smudged. Judy understood that guarding the War Gate was more of a ceremonial duty than anything else—it had to have been at least two hundred years since the last time raiders had made any serious effort at invading the city-state, and even that attempt had been a spectacular failure on their part—but that only made it all the more appalling. The guards who had been on duty when she had visited as a kit could have been illustrations for how the uniform should be worn, and even when they had rushed to her aid they had been perfect professionals. She hadn't needed their help, of course, as even the silver torc she had worn when she had been nothing more than one of the middle kits of a middling baron had been protection enough, but that was entirely beside the point. "Hmm," the pig grunted, appearing completely unimpressed by her enthusiasm as he looked down at a crumpled piece of paper he had produced from inside his tunic, "Ensign Tochtli, then."

He squinted down at the words and then looked up at Judy. "From the Tochtli Barony? You're close to home."

The Middle Wall defined an area so enormous that, standing next to it the wall appeared straight rather than curved, but Tochtli Barony was just barely visible since the day was fair and the sky was clear. The great stone farmhouse that would have been a castle were it not itself enclosed in such an enormous wall appeared hazy and dreamlike from where it stood perhaps thirty miles away. Judy had been somewhat tempted to stop on her way, if only to show her parents that she was a real member of the City Guard, but her desire to impress the mammal in charge of the gate with how quickly she reported for duty had won out. Although, considering it had clearly been a futile effort by the bored expression on the pig's face, Judy felt a touch of regret for missing her family. "Well, I've got your orders," the pig said, plowing on without waiting for an answer, "Escort the package to Phoenix."

Judy had already known what her assignment was, but if there was one thing she had learned during her time in the City Guard it was that they loved to repeat themselves. She was about to ask the pig if he had the package when the way he had phrased her orders struck her. "Escort, sir?" she asked, "I thought I would be carrying the package myself."

Judy had been under no illusions about what couriers did, and while getting assigned to carry a package alone through the ruins of what had once been the outermost part of the city-state hadn't seemed particularly glamorous, it had seemed a decent opportunity to demonstrate her value. Escorting even a small convoy of supplies out to the lone settlement in the Outer Baronies would be a much greater opportunity, and Judy briefly indulged in thinking of what it would be like to keep a careful eye out from the front seat of a caravan before the pig's words intruded on her fantasy. "Carry?" he said, and his chuckling was unpleasant, "If you can lift him, you're welcome to try. Come on, ensign, meet what you'll be escorting."

The pig gestured her to follow him inside the guardhouse, which only appeared small due to the enormous scale of the gate and wall it was next to. It was built of the same seemingly perfect white stone blocks as the wall, each block about three feet on a side and fit so tightly together that Judy couldn't have gotten so much as a hair into the gaps between each block. The guardhouse was actually one of a pair, for it was mirrored on either side of the gate, both seeming identical. The guardhouses were about thirty feet long by twenty feet wide and rather squat. Neither had any windows, but when they entered the space was nonetheless brightly lit by alchemical torches that burned evenly and without so much as a hint of flickering behind the glass globes that contained them. The guardhouse was, at least, somewhat neater in appearance than the pig who had greeted her, although not by much. The main space of the guardhouse was dominated by a number of desks pushed off in the corners covered with untidy stacks of paperwork, and in the middle of the room there was an enormous wooden table with a patolli board on top of it, around which there were three mammals playing. Two of them, an alpaca and a goat, wore City Guard uniforms somewhat neater than the pig's, but the third was definitely not a guard. He was a fox, and although the torc around his neck was the dull bronze of a merchant, Judy had never before seen a merchant who didn't apply any ornamentation to their torc. Where most merchants would decorate their torcs with baubles indicating their guild memberships—perfectly formed gold or silver ornaments in the shape of their guild symbols for the better off or colored twists of string for the poorer ones—his was completely bare, but he certainly dressed as though he was prosperous. He wore a bottle-green coat with brass buttons that had been left casually open, exposing an embroidered vest and a shirt that looked as though it was made of silk.

When Judy saw him, her paw went involuntarily to her cheek, feeling the scars hidden beneath the fur, before she lowered it, ashamed of her reaction. It wasn't fair to the fox to assume he was anything like her one-time tormentor all those years ago when she had first visited the War Gate. In any event, he certainly didn't look or sound anything like that young fox; even leaving aside his obvious lack of scars identical to her own, he was tall and lanky where Gideon had been short and thick for a fox. The fox at the table, who was cheerfully scooping in his winnings with exaggerated thanks to Macuilxōchitl for his good fortune, had a surprisingly cultured voice with a distinct Inner Baronies accent. Besides, if she assumed he was a self-serving coward and traitor like Oztoyehuatl was said to have been when he betrayed Ocelotl then she was no better than all the mammals who had said a rabbit couldn't join the City Guard.

The pig cleared his throat, cutting off both the playful grumbling of the two guards who seemed to have lost about a day's wages to the fox and Judy's thoughts, and announced, "Your escort is here."

The fox stood up from the table and walked over to where Judy stood. "How do you do?" he asked, cutting a low bow, "Nicholas the Alchemist, at your service, but you can call me Nick."

Judy could only gape at him for a moment, for he might as well have announced that he was a rabbit wearing a fox costume. When she had been in training at the heart of Zootopia she had seen one or two alchemists before, but they had seemed to delight in making it known to everyone who passed them on the street that they were alchemists, with their long hooded robes embroidered with mystical symbols in gold threads and elaborately ornamented torcs bearing the ouroboros of their guild. Their order was also, from what Judy had heard in whispers from the recruits from the Inner Baronies, entirely composed of prey mammals. " _You're_ an alchemist?" she blurted, and when the words came out she realized how disbelieving she must have sounded and hastily added, "I'm sorry, I'm sure that you are one, and there's no reason a fox can't be one but I just wasn't expecting a fox to..."

That, she realized, was only making it worse, and Judy rather lamely finished, "You're not dressed like an alchemist."

Nick laughed, and there seemed to be genuine amusement in his emerald green eyes. "No, no, you're right, I'm not," he said, waving a paw dismissively, "But look at you! You must be the first bunny member of the City Guard, Ensign...?"

"Judy of the Tochtli Barony," Judy said, and the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach only got worse.

Not only had she judged him and suggested that he couldn't be a member of his profession, but he had in turn been perfectly polite to her and her own admittedly unusual career for a rabbit. "Well how about that. Ensign Tochtli, you certainly seem to be one of the more perceptive members of the City Guard," he said, and it seemed to Judy that he wore a half-smile as he spoke.

"Now that you're introduced," the pig interrupted, scowling at the fox, " _You_ have your escort. Ensign, you have your assignment. Manada, Vicugna, get the gate."

"Thank you, it has been an absolute pleasure, really, and you've been an extremely gracious host," Nick said, offering his paw for the pig to shake as the two other guards hurried off.

The guardmammal seemed extremely reluctant to take the fox's paw, but did so at last, his scowl deepening as he did so. If it fazed Nick at all the fox did not show it, for he seemed entirely cheerful as he swept a thick pack made out of glossy black snakeskin off the floor and onto his back, setting off for the door. Judy wasn't sure how the War Gate operated; it might have been purely mechanical or it might have been assisted by alchemy in some fashion, but it certainly wasn't something that had been covered in her training. However it worked, though, by the time she and Nick were outside the guardhouse the gate was open and she could do little more than stare in awe.

The last and only time she had been to the gate the guards hadn't opened it, so with the enormous doors open before her she saw for the first time what remained of the Outer Baronies. Unlike Tochtli Barony, which was lushly green and fertile with farmland stretching as far as the eye could see, or the Inner Baronies, where the densest collection of buildings in the city-state were and where powerful magic turned the climate on its head, the Outer Baronies were as ruined as Judy had always read. The ground looked to be nothing more than grit and ash, pockmarked and cratered by some long-ago calamity. What little plant life grew looked sickly and poisonous, clinging around filthy little pools of water. The remains of the Outer Wall some fifty miles off in the distance were barely visible through the haze, but the blocks looked to have taken on a nasty brownish color. Nick seemed to notice her expression of awe and he looked down at her. "Have you ever been beyond the Middle Wall?" she asked, and he nodded.

"A few times," he said breezily as they walked towards the gate and the blasted landscape that lay beyond, "There's good money to be made in Phoenix."

"Oh," Judy replied, "Are you representing the Alchemist Guild? Is that why I'm escorting you?"

It made perfect sense to her that a member of Zootopia's most powerful guild would warrant an escort from the City Guard, so she was surprised when he shook his head. "I'm not a member of the Alchemist Guild," he said, fingering his unadorned torc as if to show her its lack of a guild symbol.

Judy found herself suddenly intensely curious as to why a merchant alchemist who didn't seem to belong to any guild warranted an escort, and most of all why she had been chosen for the job. "So why am I escorting you?"

Nick did not respond for a long moment, staying silent as they walked through the opening in the Middle Wall. It was so amazingly thick that it was like walking through a tunnel, and when they were about halfway through he simply said, "Because you're a new member of the City Guard from the Middle Baronies and I'm not a member of the Alchemist Guild. You get the assignment none of the more experienced guardsmammals want and I get an..."

He paused for a moment before continuing, "Inexperienced escort."

There was no rancor in his voice, but it was hard not to take it as an insult, particularly because she had the awful sense that he was right. "Oh," she said.

"Well, you have to learn somewhere," he replied with surprising cheerfulness, "So chin up, Ensign Carrots, you get to spend the next two to three days with me."

"Please don't call me that," Judy replied, but she could feel herself smiling a little at his teasing anyway.

Maybe he was right and it was a completely meaningless assignment. Maybe he wasn't. But either way, she was going to do her absolute best to make sure he got to Phoenix.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

This story is a bit different from anything else I've ever written on a few counts. For starters, it's a fantasy setting that I developed, rather than a continuation of the movie's continuity or an interpretation of historical fact. Which isn't to say I used no historical facts in writing this story, but I'll get to that in a bit. The other major characteristic that makes this story unique among my work is that it's the first time I've ever written a story specifically for someone else. DrummerMax64, I do hope that you enjoy it, and I do appreciate you being so patient waiting for it! Hopefully it'll meet your expectations, and I hope it's also interesting to a general audience. Speaking of which, I'm posting this for two reasons: the first is that my currently running Sherlock AU "The Unlikely Heir" is rapidly coming to its end, and the second is to celebrate my second year of posting my work online, since this is the anniversary of when I started. In the two years I've been at this, I've now posted 113 chapters across five different stories. Thank you very much for reading; I really cannot say how much the support I've gotten over these past two years has meant to me.

The guidance that DrummerMax64 gave me was pretty simple: a fantasy story something kind of like Dragon Age and Game of Thrones that is an adventure and romance story. This is what I came up with, and while I tried to make the setting somewhat unique there is an underlying idea I had the guided it.

I was inspired by the Spanish-Aztec War of 1519 to 1521, which is a particularly interesting conflict in terms of the combatants and the way that it went. The Spanish invaders assembled a coalition of allies native to the region and defeated the Aztec Empire, following which the Spanish intermingled with the defeated Aztecs. However, I thought it'd be kind of interesting to have an event like that in the past of the setting rather than being the actual focus. Thus, as is mentioned in this chapter, centuries before the events of this story Zootopia had an entirely different ruling system with a completely different culture, but it was conquered by foreign invaders with their own culture who adapted what was there to serve their purposes. Of course, considering that the invaders deposed an emperor and installed a king, you might reasonably question how "equal" the society is.

As an advantage of the fantasy setting, I also developed two different systems of magic, one developed by the original inhabitants of the city and one developed by the invaders. I'll get into those later, as I tried to write this so that the relevant details come up organically in the story.

"Tochtli" is the Nahuatl word for "rabbit," and "ocelotl" the word for "jaguar." "Oveja" is Spanish for "sheep." The word "quauhxicalli" literally means "eagle gourd bowl" and is a sort of container that the Aztecs used for holding human hearts after performing a sacrifice. I tried to write this story in such a way that my author's notes aren't necessary to understand the setting, so rather than explaining now what a quauhxicalli is in this setting I'll just note that Judy's understanding that this version of Zootopia does not perform sacrifices that are fatal to the victim is correct.

"Patolli" is a real board game that the Aztecs played, and it involved a combination of luck and strategy as players attempted to move their pieces around the board while engaging in wagers against each other. During play, there is a symbolic space set aside for the god Macuilxōchitl, who would have offerings made to him during play and from whom rewards would be provided to players from the resources pooled to him.

Macuilxōchitl is one of the names for Xōchipilli, the Aztec god of art, games, beauty, dance, flowers, and song, with "Macuilxōchitl" literally meaning "five flower." "Oztoyehuatl" is the Nahuatl word for "gray fox skin" and is being used here to suggest that there's some extremely long-standing bias against foxes, although I'll refrain from commenting on whether or not Oztoyehuatl was actually a self-serving traitor. In general, though, writing this story I made the assumption that names would typically become more Western over the centuries due to how the city-state was taken over.

"Manada" is the Spanish word for "herd" and "Vicugna" is the genus that alpaca belong to.

Thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought!


	2. Chapter 2

"I'm sorry, captain, but surely you can't be suggesting that crime going _down_ is a cause for concern. Isn't that a testament to you and our brave City Guard?" the council member asked.

Captain General Bogo simply looked back at the mammal who had posed the question evenly. It had been years since he had been merely a captain, back before the queen had married, let alone given birth to the princess who watched the proceedings of what would eventually be her council with keen interest. It had been a deliberate slight, he was sure, but one that he refused to show any irritation at. Council member Esteban Cerdo was soft and pudgy, the pig's rolling folds of fat not quite hidden by his elaborately embroidered clothes. Still, although it was nearly hidden beneath his many chins, the torc around his neck was unmistakably made of platinum and encrusted with jewels where his grandfather's had been the bronze of a middling merchant. The council member's father had been the one to elevate the Cerdo family to the ranks of nobility, but it was Esteban who had managed to make them almost unimaginably wealthy. There was intelligence in those beady little eyes, no matter how much he liked to present himself as a dull flatterer whose rank was simply good fortune, and he was one of the mammals Bogo had vowed never to underestimate.

That the Queen's Council would be nearly as much trouble as the actual criminals of Zootopia had been one of the things that Bogo hadn't even considered when he had started his career with the City Guard, back when he had held no greater concerns than pickpockets and smugglers. His immediate predecessor in the role of captain general had joked with Bogo, immediately before her retirement, that the same tactics worked on both groups. At the time, Bogo had smiled politely and nodded, but years of political wrangling had completely eliminated any humor he had once found in the idea. "Crime going down is not the problem," Bogo said, choosing each word carefully, "The problem is not knowing what comes next. We need additional mammals for the City Guard or—"

"Forgive me for interrupting, captain general," council member Leodore Corazón said, "But hasn't my initiative already given you dozens of new officers? If you need more, I'm sure we can make arrangements."

For all the control that Bogo had shown in the face of Cerdo's words, the massive buffalo couldn't keep a slight frown from his face at Corazón's interjection, which he should have known was coming. The lion was responsible for what Bogo saw as the weakening of the City Guard by flooding it with candidates that never would have been accepted in the past. Still, Corazón could be surprisingly persuasive, and despite Bogo's protests the queen had at last bowed to his suggestion that a more diverse City Guard would be better-suited to the needs of policing the city-state and thrown generations of tradition on their head. The reports Bogo had read were frankly appalling—one of the newest officers was apparently a rabbit doe and another was a male raccoon, neither one of which had the size, strength, or natural aptitude for the work. "It is not that the City Guard is ungrateful," Bogo replied, "But we are in need of more traditional officers."

"Times change, captain general!" Corazón said, with quite a bit of cheer, "I hear it was one of my non-traditional officers at the top of her class."

Bogo ground his teeth as he considered the lion. Whether Corazón was deliberately attempting to weaken the City Guard or if he simply didn't care if that was the end result of his political machinations made no difference. "A fluke that will not be repeated," Bogo said.

"Why's that?" Corazón challenged, and the lion actually stood up from his seat as he began to pace the council room.

The Royal Palace was one of the oldest buildings in Zootopia, a massive stepped pyramid located precisely at the center of the city-state. Everything flowed outwards from it or fed back into it, and countless generations of mammals had shaped the design into whatever had suited their needs for the moment. The temple that had occupied the top of the pyramid had been razed generations ago as an indelible symbol of the conquest, and the palace that had been built in its place had continuously grown in the only direction it had left to go—upwards. The age of the council room was evident in how low it was in the building, nestled floors below the grandiose towers that branched outwards like the limbs of a tree, and the stone floor had been worn smooth by generations of feet. The circular table at the center of the room was a single massive piece of stone, so large around that no mammal could have reached from one end to the other, and the center of the table had a replica of the city-state in exquisite miniature that by itself was nearly six feet around. Alchemical torches lit the model from within, and significantly larger and brighter lights illuminated the windowless council room and gleamed off of Corazón's golden fur and the metal threads woven into his clothes. Although at the moment there were only seven mammals in the council room—Bogo, Cerdo, Corazón, the queen, the princess, Cencerro, and the door guard—the room could have easily sat a hundred mammals Bogo's size, and with its elaborately vaulted ceiling with massive flying buttresses all covered with vaguely grotesque engravings of faces even a giraffe would have found the amount of headroom excessive. The same design that made the room visually impressive also worked to Corazón's advantage as he spoke, his already booming voice amplified and made even more powerful with no magic beyond the skill of the long-forgotten architect who had designed the space. "Think of the advances we've made in the past few decades," Corazón said, the cadence of his voice changing as he fell into what seemed to be his favorite topic, "Fifty years ago, torcs like the ones we all wear now were impossible, but now the city's safer than it's ever been. We've pushed the limits of magic further than anyone ever has and reaped the rewards. With a modern set of quauhxicallis, any mammal can be an effective member of the City Guard."

"Well said," Cencerro chimed in, the little ewe nodding her approval at Corazón's words, " _I_ have heard—and I'm sure you've heard the same, captain general—that there are a number of mammals from my own barony now proudly serving our great city."

As the representative from the Lanolin Barony the diminutive mammal held quite a bit more power than either Cerdo or Corazón, as the queen was from the same barony even if there was no direct relation between the two sheep. For the most part, she held her tongue in council meetings, although Bogo suspected that she had the queen's ear in private more than anyone else did. "Be that as may," Bogo said, "The void left by the collapse of the Black Paw will not last long. We must—"

"Empty the city's accounts to deal with your what-ifs?" Cerdo interrupted, his face almost hatefully smug, "You've done fine work, but it is as Corazón said. We've reached the point where we simply don't _need_ a large City Guard."

"I believe you've misunderstood my point, Lord Cerdo," Corazón said, "It's not that—"

"Did you not say that our magic is more powerful than ever?" Cerdo interrupted again, "I simply do not see—"

"You must—" Corazón began, and then the queen coughed delicately.

"We seem to have gotten somewhat distracted," the queen said, and any further retorts anyone else at the table might have had were instantly lost.

Although the queen was a sheep, the same as Cencerro, their similarities ended there. Cencerro was unusually short, her clothes fairly unremarkable for a member of the nobility, and she had something of a tendency to vanish from notice due to her typically timid nature. Queen Lana III was the direct descendant of King Oveja I and despite the generations separating the two the resemblance to the ancient depictions of the first king of Zootopia was obvious. Queen Lana was tall for a sheep and unusually slender even when the fact that she preferred to keep her wool sheared close to her skin was accounted for. She wore a dress of pale blue silk, precisely the same color as her eyes, with tiny feathers at the shoulders. The dress was delicately embroidered with birds and flowers in glittering beads of precious stones, and her crown was a magnificent creation that alternated feathers worked in gold with real ones. The platinum torc around her neck had an enormous diamond that had been turned into an unparalleled alchemical torch which glowed with its own internal light, and the sheer opulence of the queen's clothes completely outdid what everyone else in the room was wearing.

"Captain General Bogo," she continued, and Bogo thought he saw the small glimmer of a smile at the queen's lips despite the serious expression on her face, "You believe we have the opportunity to prevent the rise of another criminal syndicate such as the Black Paw?"

"Yes, your majesty," Bogo replied, bowing low, "We cannot rely on getting lucky with informants."

That the Black Paw had fallen apart at all had been an incredible stroke of luck made possible only by a bear highly placed in the organization giving up everything he knew, which had been quite a lot. It was undeniably the greatest success of Bogo's tenure as the head of the City Guard, and quite possibly the greatest success the city's protectors had had in the last hundred years, which made it all the more appalling to Bogo that it was leading to yet more political maneuvering as each of the most important members of the Queen's Council vied for an advantage. The only saving grace of the current meeting was that the full council had not been convened; if everyone who sat on the council had been present it likely would have taken hours longer to accomplish even less. "Princess Isabel," the queen said suddenly, "What do you think?"

The princess suddenly sat up somewhat straighter, her mouth momentarily wide in surprise before she caught herself and checked her reaction. Princess Isabel did not particularly resemble her mother, or indeed any other mammal Bogo had ever seen before, because she was a chimera, a mammal that only existed thanks to the influence of powerful magic that had made it possible for a sheep to be the mother and a jaguar to be the father. Although she was not quite fully grown at thirteen she was still quite a bit taller than her mother, and while her legs ended with hooves her arms did not, and the claws in her paws looked as wicked as any full-blooded predator. Her coat wasn't exactly fur or wool, but somewhere in between with a blurry pattern of tawny rosettes and black spots. Her tail wasn't quite as long as that of any jaguar Bogo had ever seen before, although her ears were longer, and her mouth was full of both sharp fangs and blunt teeth.

Princess Isabel had been an unprecedented compromise, and Bogo wasn't sure what would have happened if her mother hadn't married the descendant of Emperor Ocelotl and agreed to bear an heir that would for the first time unit the two lines of royalty. "Well," the princess said hesitantly, "I suppose we must trust Captain General Bogo's judgement. You have told me a queen is only as strong as her advisers."

The queen nodded slowly. "And should he be wrong and we bankrupt the treasury as Lord Cerdo fears?" she asked, and Bogo thought he caught a slight sarcastic tinge to her words as she poked at the pig.

"Then the responsibility is ours," Princess Isabel replied promptly, and the queen smiled slightly.

Bogo knew she was proud of her daughter; although it was relatively rare for him to speak to the queen alone he thought he knew her well enough to tell that much. The queen would sometimes ask him what the general populace thought of her daughter, who was one of likely less than two dozen chimeras in the entire city, and Bogo had always been honest. It wasn't always easy—there were sometimes incredibly cruel messages daubed on walls or spread through illicit publications—but from what Bogo had seen the princess would make a fine queen one day. If, that was, a suitable husband could be found for her; by the very nature of her birth it seemed as though every noble family, no matter how small or large, thought they had a chance at making a match since all of the princess's offspring would by necessity have to be chimeras. The political scuffles almost made Bogo long for his days of patrolling the streets; he would have taken pickpockets over nobles any day.

"I believe the matter to be settled, then," the queen said, "Captain General Bogo, you have authorization to recruit an additional two cohorts, looking first to non-traditional candidates."

It was about the best that Bogo had hoped for, and it wasn't as thought there were an excessive number of mammals from species who had not previously been permitted to join the City Guard interested in the organization. The likely worst case scenario, in his mind, was perhaps a half-cohort lost to Corazón's scheme, which was at least tolerable. Getting the queen to revoke her support for the lion's pet project was likely a losing battle, but it was one he would fight at a later day. "Thank you, your majesty," Bogo said, bowing low again.

Bogo had turned and was about to walk towards the exit when the door to the council room, an enormous piece of stone so heavy that two elephants couldn't have carried it but so perfectly balanced on its hinges that just about any mammal could open it, slammed open hard enough to fill the room with the echoing crack of shattering stone. The mammal guarding the door to the council room didn't even have time to react as a mammal suddenly ran in with unnatural speed directly towards the princess, slipping past the guard before he could so much as lower his spear. Bogo's reaction, though, was immediate. One hoof went to his heavy cloak of feathers and released the clasp as the other went to his waist, his fingers unerringly seizing the quauhxicalli engraved with the image of a colibri. His cloak had barely hit the ground by the time he had the quauhxicalli to his mouth, the metallic taste of the contents burning the way that they always did. It couldn't have taken more than a few seconds, but the mammal who had ran into the room had already covered almost half of the distance between the door and the princess, moving with such speed that they were a blur.

Until, that is, the intruder suddenly wasn't. Bogo's vision sharpened and pulsed as the effects of the quauhxicalli's contents took hold, the potion derived from the blood of a hummingbird making the mammal seem to move no faster than a normal mammal could by running. The intruder was a llama wearing an unremarkable tunic and trousers, both of roughly spun fabric, charging forward with a sword held straight out in a way that told Bogo the llama had never had any formal training with it. A tin torc gleamed dully at the llama's neck, and his features were distorted into a terrible expression of hate and anger as he continued to run unerringly for the princess.

The hoof Bogo had used to free his overly heavy and restrictive cloak of colorful feathers had gone for another quauhxicalli the instant it was free, but he felt as though he was moving underwater, his body unable to match the speed at which he could see until he had finished drinking the little vial engraved with the image of a cheetah. Even then, as he ran to intercept the llama, it didn't seem as though he would be fast enough, not even the speed of a cheetah the potion had granted him even close to how fast the llama assassin was moving. It didn't seem possible—criminals sometimes did get their paws on quauhxicallis, but almost never ones as good as what the City Guard had and absolutely never ones that were better—but the proof was before his own eyes. The llama twisted as Bogo approached, his long nails clattering on the worn stone of the floor as he tried to dodge. With the power of the colibri quauhxicalli enhancing his reflexes, the sound was oddly distorted, and Bogo shook away the observation that had bubbled up into his mind as he focused on stopping the llama before it was too late.

Dimly, Bogo was aware that he had yelled for the llama to stop, but the sound was just as distorted to his ears, seeming to come out too slowly to make any sense as he lunged for the llama. The llama twisted again, impossibly fast, and Bogo saw flecks of blood coming from the llama's feet as whatever quauhxicalli he had used pushed his body beyond its limits, the flesh of his soles wearing away as he ran. For a moment, which might have only been a second but felt like an eternity, Bogo thought that he had failed, that the llama would make it past him, but then the llama stumbled.

It seemed as though the would-be assassin had slipped on the blood he was losing through the bottoms of his feet, his last dodge making him lose his balance faster than he could recover it. The llama staggered and with a wordless cry stabbed at Bogo, the tip of the sword glancing off the buffalo's silver-plated breastplate before finding its mark in his shoulder. At nearly the same instant that Bogo felt the pain of being stabbed, slowed and dulled though it was in his heightened state of awareness, he felt the magic of his torc lash out.

It had been decades since Bogo had been injured before in the line of duty, more often by mammals too panicked to realize what a terrible idea it was, and to his relief despite whatever the llama had used to push his speed beyond even what a quauhxicalli derived from cheetah blood could do he wasn't immune to the torc's response.

A bloodstain suddenly appeared on the shoulder of the llama's tunic as a wound identical to the one he had inflicted appeared, a small red patch that grew sluggishly to Bogo's perception but must have been bleeding rather quickly. The sword fell from the llama's fingers as the mammal collapsed in slow motion, his momentum carrying him across the floor even as his feet came out from under him. He left a streak of blood across it, and Bogo could hear the slow crack of breaking bones as the unyielding floor mercilessly met the llama's fragile body.

Still, Bogo took no chances, his own injury completely forgotten as he ran over to the limp form of the intruder. The colibri quauhxicalli was already beginning to wear off, burning off the way it always did even as it made his vision swim in and out of focus as colors seemed to go from being unnaturally bright to gray-tinged. The speed of a cheetah would last a few minutes longer, but before even reaching the llama Bogo knew it would make no difference. The llama's head was twisted at an impossible angle, turned almost all the way around on his neck from tumbling across a stone floor far faster than any mammal should have been able to run. The llama's chest was completely motionless, and Bogo knew that he was dead.

Bogo turned around, looking to the other occupants of the room. The lion who had been guarding the door—Bogo searched his memory briefly for his name and couldn't come up with it—was only a step behind him, his spear at the ready. "Lieutenant," Bogo said, his voice surprisingly even to his own ears; the buffalo was not even slightly squeamish when it came to violence, but the aftereffects of taking quauhxicallis tended to be unpleasant, "I want to know how this mammal got in and I want to be sure there aren't any more assassins. Have the entire palace searched, top to bottom. No one leaves and no one enters without my permission."

The lion, to his credit, saluted crisply and ran for the door. "And get more guards in here," Bogo called after him.

The lion called back an acknowledgement as he left the room, shutting the ruined door behind himself. "Your majesties," Bogo said, turning to face the queen and the princess.

The two mammals were clutching each other, eyes wide with fear, and Bogo couldn't blame them. It had been generations since it had last happened, but it was far from unheard of for a ruler to be deposed by assassination, and in all the time Bogo had led the City Guard he had never seen an attempt come so close to success. The Royal Palace should have been impossible for an unauthorized mammal to enter, and no mammal should have been capable of moving as fast as the llama. Clearly, the llama had been devoted enough to his cause to be willing to die with his target, because even if he had succeeded in inflicting a mortal wound on the princess her torc would have caused him to suffer the same. "I promise you, we will find the mammal or mammals behind this," Bogo said.

No one else in the room seemed capable of saying anything; Cerdo's normally pinkish skin had gone almost white, his weak jaw hanging loosely, and the expressions of shock that Cencerro and Corazón wore were nearly identical. Still, as Bogo looked at the members of the Queen's Council in the room, an unpleasant thought occurred to him. Was it one of them, or one of the members of the Queen's Council who hadn't been present who was responsible? Had the petty political bickering at last exploded into treason? "Captain general," the princess said, rather faintly, as she interrupted his thoughts, "You're bleeding."

Bogo looked down at his chest and saw that blood was flowing down his armor, the droplets only sticking to his breastplate in the scuff mark the llama had gouged into it. The pain of his stab wound suddenly forced itself to the forefront of his mind, and along with it a dull ache in his chest from the glancing blow the llama had made to his armor before finding a softer target. "I'll be fine," he said.

"Thank you," the queen said, and Bogo nodded, his attention already elsewhere.

Perhaps the assassin had done a thorough job of covering his tracks, or perhaps not. Whatever the case, Bogo would absolutely not stop until he had answers.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

I've based the ranks in this story off of the Spanish military; the rank of captain general is the highest rank in the Spanish Army. Similarly, Judy's rank of ensign is the lowest possible officer rank in the Spanish military. I chose to use the English spellings for all ranks, although there was some appeal to having her title be alférez and Bogo's be capitán general.

In any case, this story also does something I've never done before by having not just different viewpoint characters but also different plot threads that they follow. My first story did switch between the perspectives of Nick and Judy, but since they were almost always together I suppose it didn't really make much of a difference. In this case, Nick and Judy are traveling to the point in Zootopia furthest away from where Bogo is, so there will be quite a bit of difference in what they're experience. Next week it will be back to Judy and the trip across the wastelands; hopefully you'll find both of these different plots engaging.

As part of my attempt to suggest a history inspired by the Spanish-Aztec War, the Royal Palace is somewhat inspired by the Templo Mayor, an Aztec temple in the city that was the seat of the Aztec Empire, which eventually became Mexico City.

"Corazón" is Spanish for "heart" and serves to give a name to this story's version of Lionheart. Similarly, "cencerro" is Spanish for "cowbell" and gives a name to this story's version of Bellwether, while "cerdo" means "pork" and gives a name I thought appropriate for a pig. The Lanolin Barony is named for lanolin, a wax that wool-bearing mammals (such as sheep) secrete that helps in waterproofing their wool.

This chapter begins to reveal some of the details of the systems of magic that I created for this story, beginning with the existence of chimeras. For the purposes of this chapter, I didn't think it really fit to explain how exactly chimeras are created, but Princess Isabel is what would be an impossibility in the real world due to being the offspring of a sheep and a jaguar. I generally assume, for my Zootopia stories, that only hybrids of the sort possible in the real world are possible, but the existence of magic opens up quite a few possibilities. I will say, though, that the creation of chimeras is something that needs to be deliberately done rather than being possible without magical intervention.

Next up, in terms of magic, is the quauhxicalli. These were inspired by the Aztec practice of human sacrifice, and while in real life a quauhxicalli would be used to store human hearts following sacrifice, in this story they are small vials containing potions made from blood that temporarily give someone the traits of the animal that the blood came from. "Colibri" is the genus of hummingbirds, which really do have an incredible ability to track fast moving stimuli.

The torcs are my take on the shock collars from the early version of Zootopia, with something of a twist in how they work. In this series, everyone wears one, with the material it is made of and how it is decorated serving as an indicator of social rank, and they serve as a deterrent to physical violence in a very simple way: if you injure someone, their torc will cause you to suffer an identical injury. Subsequent chapters will go into a little more detail about how they are made, how they work, and their limitations, but I thought it would just bog down the narrative in this chapter. I did develop this setting in such a way that I wanted to avoid the trope of medieval stasis, where a fantasy setting has apparently gone with absolutely no advances for hundreds or thousands of years. The torcs are explicitly said to be a fairly recent development in this chapter, having been if not invented than at the very least having been made practical less than a century before the story starts, and there will continue to be other nods to things that have changed.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought.


	3. Chapter 3

"What are you _doing?_ " Judy asked, and in her surprise she was completely unable to keep the incredulity from her voice.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Nick asked, and there seemed to be genuine curiosity in his voice.

At very nearly the same moment that the gate that connected the Outer Baronies to the Middle Baronies had closed with a rumbling finality, Nick had reached up to his neck and removed his torc. Judy had seen plenty of depictions of mammals from the distant past without torcs but had never before seen anyone except newborns without one. Even the youngest of her siblings had worn torcs that alternated solid panels with fine mesh chain that could be expanded as they and their necks grew, and the sight of Nick's exposed and slightly matted fur where his torc had rested brought forth a sense of impropriety and wrongness she couldn't quite put into words. The alchemist, however, seemed completely unperturbed by his act, simply looking down at her with his torc in one paw as the other massaged and fluffed the fur at his neck. The arcane symbols etched into the torc's interior surface glowed dimly in the sunlight before he stashed it away into an interior pocket of his bottle-green coat.

"You took your torc off," Judy said, feeling rather foolish at having to state the obvious.

"Yes, yes I did," Nick replied, and a smile crept across his features as he carelessly spun around and started walking away from the gate.

Judy stood rooted in place for a moment before her sense of duty demanded that she see to her job, and she quickly caught up with the fox, who was walking with something of a jaunty stride despite the heavy-looking pack on his back that clinked musically at each step. "Why?" she asked, and the fox chuckled.

"Why not?" he said, and the smile on his face grew a touch smugger, "It's not like it works outside the Middle Wall. And if it did—which it doesn't—it wouldn't do anything if you decided to run me through with that spear of yours. So why bother?"

Judy couldn't help but gape at him; he might as well have asked why mammals wore trousers or didn't relieve themselves in public. Dimly, some part of her mind recognized that both of his points were correct; the magic that empowered the torcs didn't function beyond the Middle Wall, and as a member of the City Guard it was true that she could inflict any injury she wished upon a mammal without the magic of their torc affecting her in an identical fashion. It was a privilege that had made the City Guard especially feared by some citizens, but Judy took her vow to use her authority responsibly seriously enough to be more than a little offended at his insinuation. "I hope I haven't put the idea in your head, by the way," Nick added, interrupting her thoughts, "I would hate to be stabbed."

"I won't stab you!" Judy protested, her ears back, and she pulled her spear back too to emphasize the point.

"I'm delighted to hear that," Nick replied, rather deadpan, and he continued walking.

Judy followed him silently for a while, taking in the bleak and ruined landscape of the Outer Baronies. The path they were following might have been a road, once upon a time, but centuries of blowing grit had left it as little more than an uneven rut. There were occasional craters, somewhat incongruously full of what looked like shattered and milky glass, but the landscape was otherwise fairly flat. Eventually, though, the view became monotonous, and Judy could no longer hold in her curiosity about her odd traveling companion. She had never even heard a mammal talk about the idea of taking their torc off, let alone one who had actually done it, and despite his rather blasé assertion that it didn't serve any useful purpose outside the heart of Zootopia she wondered if he had some ulterior motive. The possibilities she came up with—elaborate criminal scheme, a kind of deviant preference, something related to alchemy—all seemed about equally possible, but then she wondered if he had meant it as a distraction.

Perhaps he had meant only to throw her off-balance to conceal the true purpose for his trip to Phoenix and why it merited an escort by the City Guard. If that had been his intent, he had succeeded admirably; he hadn't quite answered her questions about his trip. "So why exactly are you going to Phoenix?" Judy asked, and she had decided that she wouldn't stop questioning him until he gave a straight answer.

It wasn't that she assumed that he was a criminal of some sort just because he was a fox, of course—she told herself she would have asked the same of any mammal acting so suspiciously—and his initial answer didn't do much to reassure her that he wasn't plotting something. "Do you know how government contracts are awarded?" Nick asked, slowing down his pace a little and looking over his shoulder at her.

"No," Judy said, and Nick shrugged.

"It's simple, really," he said, "When the queen, or one of her dutifully appointed executors—of the law, I mean, not of mammals—decides that something needs to be done that they can't or won't do themselves, they write up their requirements. Very formal, you know, all sorts of clauses and 'wherefores' and 'as executed' and so on and on."

Nick rolled a paw to emphasize the dullness of the proceedings before breezily continuing. "In a lot of cases, those requirements become contracts that go to the friends of whoever has the ear of the mammal making the decision. That's usually the head of the largest and most powerful guild responsible for whatever needs doing. If a new government building needs pipes installed, that's the Plumbers Guild. If a public square needs to be repaired, that's the Stonemasons Guild. If—"

Judy saw where he was going and cut him off. "If alchemy needs to be done, that's the Alchemist Guild," she said, and the fox nodded approvingly.

"Precisely," he said, "Now, the reason that I'm going to Phoenix with your charming company is because the Alchemists Guild got greedy. Take my advice, Ensign, and never get greedy; that's always what gets a mammal caught."

Judy frowned, unsure of how truthfully he had meant his praise of her—his words had seemed earnest enough, but she somehow felt as though he was mocking her—and where precisely his experience in getting caught came from. "Caught doing what?" she asked.

"Oh, anything, really," Nick said with unnatural cheer, his tail wagging, "In the case of the Alchemist Guild, charging ten times as much for work in Phoenix as they do in the city center."

"So the government is sending you to do alchemy work?" Judy asked, thinking she had at last grasped the reason for his trip.

There was a certain kind of logic to it; if the Alchemist Guild was charging outrageous prices for their work, the queen or one of the mammals under her had stepped in to ensure the work would be done in a more cost-effective manner.

"Sending me? No, no, of course not," Nick said, waving her words away, "I'm going to make a bid on an alchemy project and you're going to make sure I get to Phoenix safe and sound to put my bid in. It'd be a shame if any 'accidents' happened on the way, after all."

He gave her a disarming smile as he spoke, not seeming to take the potential threat of the Alchemist Guild ensuring he couldn't undercut them very seriously. Not that Judy could blame him; from everything she knew of the Alchemist Guild they didn't seem the sort to send assassins. Even if they were, however, it would have been very difficult to sneak up on them; despite having walked for more than an hour the scenery didn't seem to have changed at all. They were still on a dusty and rutted path that led through a blasted wasteland marked only occasionally by glass-filled depressions or pools of stagnant-looking water surrounded by sickly plants, and the remains of the Outer Wall didn't look any closer than they had from the War Gate. It wasn't quite what Judy had had in mind when she joined the City Guard, but it didn't take her long to see that there was still a sort of greater meaning to her work. Saving the city money might not be quite the same as directly saving a mammal's life or even just stopping a pickpocket, but the money that the city saved could surely be put to better use. "What kind of alchemy project?" Judy asked, and it took Nick a moment to respond.

"Water purification," he said at last, "They need someone to transmute what's in the wells into something drinkable."

That, at least, seemed like a noble enough purpose; mammals couldn't live without water, after all, so even if she wasn't doing the actual work of treating it Judy still felt as though it would be making a difference. Assuming, of course, that Nick won the bid, but he certainly seemed rather confident in himself. She thought again that she might have misjudged her traveling companion, and as she forced down her guilt another set of questions occurred to her. "How did you become an alchemist?" she asked.

"Oh, that's a long and boring story," Nick said, "Lots of thick books and studying. Now how about you? What makes a bunny join the City Guard?"

Whatever other skills he had, Nick was remarkably adept at being an audience, and the words seemed to simply flow out of Judy as she told him what it had been like to hold such an unorthodox goal. It occurred to her after the fact that it was the first time anyone had ever simply listened to her explaining her dream of making the city better without dismissing it, and even if the fox—if Nick—had some reason to be friendly and polite beyond the fact that it was simply how he was, it didn't show. Shortly after she had finished explaining how Lord Corazón's push for mammals from species who had not traditionally been allowed to join the City Guard had made her admittance possible, she saw something that made any thoughts of further conversation impossible.

The ground of the Outer Baronies was so flat, excepting the craters that dotted the landscape on either side of the path, that it had been easy to get lulled into the sense that it would continue being so flat all the way until they reached Phoenix. However, what started as a hazy and shimmering patch of darkness soon resolved itself into the single largest depression that Judy had ever seen. Judy had thought that some of the other craters that they had passed on the way, which were large enough to swallow elephants, were large, but they were absolutely nothing compared to what they stood before. Unlike the craters, there was no raised rim of rocks and translucent glass; it was simply an enormous trench, which looked as though it ran all the way from the remains of the Outer Wall to the Middle Wall and had to be more than a hundred feet deep and half a mile wide. Although the end of the trench at the Outer Wall was too far away to make out clearly, they were still close enough to the Middle Wall to see something Judy had never seen before—the foundation of the wall. If she had been asked before, Judy might have said that such an enormous wall would have a correspondingly enormous foundation; her father had been too minor a noble for her to have been excluded from chores on the farmlands such as building and repairing walls. While she knew how the weight of a low wall would gradually make it sink into the softer ground, she never would have guessed that the Middle Wall extended below ground for at least the hundred foot depth of the trench and likely much further.

The trench itself was what really caught her eye, because unlike the milky and dirty-looking lumps of irregular glass that were in the other craters the interior of the trench had a certain geometric elegance to it that struck her as unnatural. Despite the gritty film of dirt that covered much of its surface, Judy could still see that it was faceted as precisely as a jewel with interlinked patterns of triangles and hexagons that glittered. The interior surface was at least ten feet thick and seemed almost perfectly transparent, the dying light of the sun forming glittering rainbows that danced across the yawning expanse. The most spectacular rainbows gleamed off what seemed to be the only way across the chasm, a bridge of the same material as the inside of the trench.

The bridge was about eight feet wide with high sides and looked to be more than a foot thick at its narrowest point, but at the side of the chasm they were standing on—and, it seemed, most likely on the other side—the bridge had complex triangular supports that branch out and anchored it like an enormous spider's web made out of prisms. It was one of the more amazing structures Judy had ever seen in her life, even after her training at the heart of Zootopia and its marvelous mixture of buildings both ancient and new. Although Judy had memorized the simple map that had been provided for her that showed the path from the War Gate to Phoenix—which had seemed rather pointless, since there was only one gently counterclockwise turning path—the map hadn't quite impressed on her the true nature of the Cozamalotl Bridge. Nick had paused at the foot of the bridge, although in his case it did not seem to be awe at the structure; his ears had pressed back against his head and his features were set in a resigned grimace. "I hate this part," he muttered in a voice so low Judy thought he had meant her not to hear it before stepping gingerly onto the bridge.

As Judy had never doubted would be the case, the bridge gave absolutely no protest at his weight, seeming as solid as the nearby Middle Wall. Unlike the wall, however, the bridge was just as transparent as the parts of the trench not covered in grime, and through either some accident of the design or clever foresight the numerous triangular gaps in the side rails of the bridge must have allowed the wind to blow through and keep the surface relatively clean except where the dirt caked up around the supports. It meant that there was at best a hazy film preventing a look down from appearing as though she should be plummeting to her death and at worst gave virtually no sign that there was anything blocking such a fall. Nick was picking his way across slowly, his eyes almost entirely closed and the fur on his tail seeming to stick straight out, and Judy realized the obvious. "Are you afraid of heights?" she called to him.

"What would make you think that?" he asked, and to his credit his voice was remarkably steady, "This is wonderful, really it is."

They kept walking along the bridge, the occasional gust of wind making an eerie and somehow mournful sound come off the trench even as it ruffled Nick's coat and the feathers at Judy's wrists. "This bridge was made with alchemy, right?" she asked, breaking the silence by blurting the first words that came to her head.

"What?" Nick asked, turning to look back at her with a puzzled expression across his features.

"This bridge... This trench... It's alchemy, right?" she said.

Her attempt at distracting him from the crossing was probably obvious to him, but even as he kept walking forward he did answer. "Of course it is. There's not a natural diamond anywhere this large."

"How do you know it's not a natural diamond?" Judy asked, and she wasn't feigning interest to keep him talking; it was amazing to think that a mammal had made such a thing even if the alternative was that someone had found a diamond tens of miles long.

"Besides the size, you mean?" Nick asked, but he was still walking forward, "It's too perfect. No flaws, no inclusions, nothing."

Judy wasn't anything close to an expert on gems, but he did appear to be correct. The bridge was unsettlingly perfect, despite the fact that it had to be centuries old from the uprising that had resulted in the Outer Baronies being laid to waste. "It's easy making something perfect with alchemy," Nick continued, "It's the flaws that are tricky."

"That sounds like counterfeiting," Judy said, and Nick actually laughed.

"Well, I wouldn't know," Nick said, and for the first time since they had gotten on the bridge his voice had a different quality to it than a forced calm ruined only by a slight edge.

He was, Judy realized, teasing her, since he continued, with one paw raised, "You have my solemn oath, Ensign Carrots, that I am not a counterfeiter."

"I told you not to call me that," Judy replied, but there was no heat in her words.

"Did you?" Nick asked, "It must have slipped my mind."

Judy could only shake her head as they crossed the rest of the distance to the far side of the chasm. Nick was, she thought, truly an unusual fox.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

As CorvidaeHakubi rather shrewdly guessed from the last chapter, there are different kinds of torcs; as is touched upon in this chapter, the ones worn by City Guards do not react to injuries that they cause to other mammals, which would otherwise make subduing a suspect rather difficult. Additionally, the effective radius of the torcs is limited to everything inside the Middle Wall, which does cover virtually every mammal living in this version of Zootopia as there isn't much in the Outer Baronies. I've been trying to establish the rules, so to speak, of this setting in such a way that they come out naturally through the course of the story rather than simply dumping them all at once; hopefully it's working as a logical progression.

What Nick describes as the usual state of government contracts in this setting is what would typically be called cronyism or no-bid contracts in the present era. Cronyism isn't exactly uncommon in non-democratic societies (and certainly isn't unheard of in democratic ones, either), and historically guilds were formed in part to take advantage of having the ear of power. One of the simplest ways of ensuring steady work, after all, is to ensure that your group is the only one capable of doing it, which can take many forms in how it's actually executed. Stonemasonry is the real profession of working with stone, and is one of the oldest professions. Although plumbing may seem to be rather modern, several ancient societies had sophisticated plumbing systems, and the word "plumber" is actually derived from the Latin word "plumbum," meaning "lead," due to the use of lead in constructing piping by the ancient Romans.

The word "cozamalotl" means "rainbow," which seemed apropos for a bridge made out of diamond. One of the things I enjoyed about this setting was thinking up different ways that the ability to transmute matter via alchemy could be used practically. Although in the real world it is possible to create diamonds synthetically (they are, after all, just a precise arrangement of carbon atoms into a regular cubical crystal structure) creating a single diamond of the size described here would be impossible with modern techniques. On the other hand, Nick isn't right about there not being enormous natural diamonds. Arthur C. Clarke suggested that the core of Jupiter might consist of a massive diamond larger than the Earth, and while he may not be correct it is known that the white dwarf star BPM 37093 (located about 50 lightyears away from Earth) has a core of crystallized carbon about the size of the Earth's moon.

The use of the word "counterclockwise" to indicate the direction that Judy and Nick are traveling indicates both that it isn't a straight line path from the War Gate to Phoenix but rather a curving arc, and also suggests that there are clocks in this setting. Although there are many older forms of clocks (such as hourglasses), mechanical clocks were first developed around the year 1300; considering this story is based around two societies that existed in the 1500s and then have developed together for quite some time afterwards, I thought clockwork was a plausible part of the setting.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought.


	4. Chapter 4

The princess had insisted—and no one had dared to say otherwise—that Bogo be treated by her own personal alchemist. Although Bogo's own concerns were for the continued safety of both the princess and the queen, blood from his pierced shoulder had already soaked through his quilted tunic and was beginning to trickle down his leg, so he left his own protest unvoiced and sat down at the massive table that dominated the council room. The pain from the wound throbbed with every beat of his heart but he did his best not to show it, remaining rigidly upright as reports came in from throughout the palace and he waited for the alchemist's arrival. Mercifully, the three senior members of the council—Cerdo, Corazón, and Cencerro—had apparently been too stunned by the attack to protest being ushered out of the room; the last thing he needed was one or more of them sniping at each other or at him for political points while he tried to think.

The news was, unfortunately, exactly as he had feared: there was absolutely no sign of how the llama, whose crumpled body still rested on the floor in the middle of a slowly spreading red puddle, had made it into the palace or past the numerous guards who should have at least seen him. It was one of the reasons that Bogo absolutely despised the palace; to someone who had never seen it before it was awe-inspiring, with grandly vaulted ceilings, elaborate carvings and wall-hangings, and countless rooms and halls, but to the mammals who had to guard it the palace was an absolute nightmare. Centuries of building and remodeling at the whims of generations of the royal family meant there were long-forgotten or bricked over passages and rooms that were still occasionally accessible, and the protruding stonemasonry that made the building so elegant meant that even the familiar and well-used halls had blind spots even a fairly large mammal could hide in, to say nothing of the sharp corners an assassin might lurk behind.

Bogo's gloomy thoughts were interrupted by a rap at the door to the council room, which was remarkably more or less intact despite the massive crack that had formed from the force with which it had hit the wall. The powdery fragments that had fallen off the door and the wall formed a gritty mess across the entryway with the marks of paws and hooves standing out distinctively. The princess gave a little start at the knock, as she had on each occasion someone had requested entry since the failed attack. The queen showed no outward reaction, but she had far more experience controlling her features than her daughter. Still, Bogo knew her well enough to know that beneath her calm exterior, sitting at the princess's side and stroking her oddly woolly fur, she was afraid. Her hoof trembled ever so slightly and her mouth was a thin and rigid slash across her face as she nodded at Bogo.

"Pass phrase," one of the four mammals now standing guard just inside the council room called through the thick door.

After the llama's attack using incredibly powerful magic, Bogo wasn't taking any chances that the would-be assassin didn't have confederates that might try striking again. If it wasn't for the design of the hallways—and Bogo cursed the architects who had thought that alcoves and protruding pillars were worth the danger they caused—he would have insisted on moving the queen and princess, but the route to any other room seemed hideously vulnerable. _I'm going to insist every single corridor in this gods-forsaken palace is plastered over until there's_ nothing _to hide behind_ , he thought to himself before returning his attention to the response that came from the other side.

"Acta deos numquam mortalia fallunt," a male voice replied, stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar words of the dead language.

Although Bogo recognized the voice, he let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding once the guard reached the end of the pass phrase. Although the City Guard didn't carry them, he had heard of quauhxicallis made from certain birds that allowed the user to perfectly mimic voices. Since neither blood magic nor alchemy could—to the best of his knowledge—allow a mammal to read the thoughts of another and pluck a code from someone's mind, he gave a brusque nod to the guards at the door. After they first opened it a crack and verified the identity of the mammals trying to get in the door was opened the rest of the way and quickly shut after a rather peculiar pair.

One was Jaime of the Tecuani Barony, a stolid jaguar and one of Bogo's most trusted captains. The other was a mouse perched atop a large and apparently quite heavy wooden box that the jaguar was carefully carrying with both paws who Bogo recognized by sight as Princess Isabel's personal alchemist although he had never formally met the mammal. Even if he had never seen the mouse before, the fact that he was an alchemist would have been obvious; although the torc around his neck wouldn't have even made its way around Bogo's smallest finger and the ouroboros on it was consequently too tiny to see from across the room, the mouse was wearing the most ostentatious robes he had ever seen.

The mouse, who looked to be about forty with the beginning of a gut, had draped himself in midnight blue silk so covered with silver embroidery that it looked almost as stiff as Bogo's silver breastplate, and while the arcane symbols were impossible to make out they glowed with their own light. "Your highness," he squeaked in his high-pitched little voice at first the queen and then the princess as he bowed to each in turn.

"Tomas!" the princess said, her features brightening as she looked fondly at the little alchemist.

"Are you well, Princess Isabel?" the mouse asked, bowing again, "Were you injured?"

Tomas had apparently not paid any notice to Bogo, and the princess quickly waved the mouse's concerns away. "It's Captain General Bogo," she said, "He's been stabbed."

"Oh my!" Tomas said, bringing a tiny paw to his mouth as he turned at last and took Bogo in.

"Captain, bring me over at once," he ordered Jaime—rather needlessly, since the jaguar was already walking over to where Bogo sat.

Jamie set the wooden box down on the table with exquisite delicacy, but the mouse's features still darkened into a scowl. "Careful!" he admonished, "There are powers beyond your ken at work in this box."

It was a testament to Jamie's professionalism that he didn't give Tomas the evil eye behind his back but simply dipped his head. "My apologies," Jamie said in a carefully neutral voice and he turned to leave.

"Where do you suppose you're going?" Tomas asked, tapping an impatient foot before descending down a tiny set of stairs built into the side of his box and jumping to the tabletop with surprising grace for a mammal wearing such cumbersome clothes, "Open the case!"

Jamie did as he was instructed, revealing a dizzying array of glass vials of varying sizes and strange symbols etched into the cunningly made drawers that folded outwards as the lid was opened. Although some of the vials were about the size of Bogo's fingers, Tomas went to one that was so small it might not have been visible had it not been glowing with its own light. Unlike alchemical torches or the embroidery on the alchemist's robes, which glowed a pale silvery white, the little vial burned a fiery red almost too bright to look directly at. Tomas lifted the vial with both paws and held it aloft. "Behold the complete philosopher's stone," he intoned, although his solemnity was somewhat ruined by his squeaky voice, "The magnum opus of the Alchemist Guild, my proof of mastery over the very elements, the—"

"Tomas," Princess Isabel interrupted, "Captain General Bogo is bleeding a lot. Could you..."

She trailed off as she rolled a paw, signaling the mouse to get on with actually performing the treatment, and Tomas's pompous nature evaporated. "My apologies," he mumbled, kicking at the table sheepishly as his tail drooped, "Captain General Bogo, could you please remove your armor and tunic?"

The arm that had been stabbed was clumsy and numb as Bogo unbuckled his breastplate and set it aside, and pulling his tunic off was little better. By the time he was done, Jamie was standing at Bogo's side, Tomas balanced atop his palm-up paws and looking at the injury gravely. "A little closer, please," Tomas told Jamie, who dutifully moved the mouse closer to the injury. The little alchemist pulled a stopper too small to see off the glowing vial and then tipped its contents into the wound. The contents didn't seem to be liquid or a single solid, but were rather like a few dozen grains of sand as they tumbled out of the vial. The instant the first of the tiny philosopher's stones reached Bogo's injury, a sensation he couldn't describe came over him.

Bogo had never before been treated with a complete philosopher's stone, just incomplete ones. Privately, he had long-suspected that the only difference between the two was that incomplete stones were silvery-white and the Alchemist Guild only made red "complete" stones so as to boast that they had something that no one else knew how to make, but that suspicion instantly vanished. Whereas an incomplete stone used to treat an injury just tingled mildly as it slowly helped the body heal and kept infection at bay, the complete stone somehow burned and froze at the same time. It was an impossible combination of contradictions, the stones somehow feeling both red-hot and bitterly cold, liquid and solid, impossibly heavy and light as a breeze. Bogo grit his teeth against the feeling, which seemed to only be intensifying as it worked its way deeper and deeper into his arm. For a moment, he could feel his veins and arteries alive with that unnatural sensation before it stopped so suddenly it was like covering a torch.

The wound that had been in his shoulder was gone. It didn't look as though it had healed; it was simply gone, with nothing to indicate that there had ever been an injury in the first place. There was no scar and even Bogo's fur looked normal. "How does it feel?" Tomas asked, looking up at Bogo expectantly.

Bogo flexed his arm once, the muscles moving smoothly and without so much as a hint of pain. "It's healed," he said, "Thank you."

Princess Isabel applauded enthusiastically from where she sat, and Tomas gave a little bow. "That was wonderful," she cried, and Tomas smiled.

"It is my pleasure," he said.

"It was very well done indeed," the queen said, and she was looking at the mouse rather fondly.

Evidently neither the princess nor the queen was put off by the alchemist's arrogance, but Bogo supposed the queen, at least, had reason to be fond of him. Tomas had, after all, been one of the mammals who had enabled the queen to become pregnant with a chimera, and whatever his faults did seem to care deeply for the princess's well-being. "Close my case, please," Tomas said, turning up to Jamie, but before the jaguar could comply Bogo spoke.

"Could you examine our would-be assassin?" he said, and Tomas seemed surprised at the question.

"I beg your pardon?" the little mouse said, "I'm an alchemist, not a blood magician. I don't know anything about quauhxicallis—except, of course, that pure alchemy is far superior to anything as crude as blood."

He gave a disdainful little sniff, but Bogo wasn't willing to accept anything less than full cooperation. "That llama moved faster than anything I've ever seen," he said bluntly, pointing at the corpse.

A wall hanging had been draped over the body, but it was still incredibly obvious what it was. "I want to know why."

"I'm afraid I can't help," Tomas insisted.

"Do you mean that there's something alchemy can't do that blood magic can?" the queen asked, looking across the table at the mouse with a thoughtful expression on her face.

"Blood magic has its uses," Tomas said, and it looked as though every word cost him great effort.

"The captain general is right," the queen continued, "I've never seen a mammal using a quauhxicalli move so quickly."

"I suppose I could look," Tomas said, "But you can't expect anything; it's likely to be an advanced quauhxicalli."

"Or perhaps something new done with alchemy?" the queen suggested.

"Perhaps," the mouse allowed.

After an examination of nearly half-an-hour—with the queen deliberating facing the other way with the princess as she tried to engage her daughter in normal conversation—the little alchemist finally looked up from his work. Jamie had patiently done everything Tomas had asked, gingerly moving the body around and even removing what was left of the llama's torc; the tin it was made out of had been badly mangled by the impact with the floor and the arcane symbols etched into it had gone dark. Bogo was glad for the distraction, because even after a thorough search of every known entrance to the palace and interviews with every mammal who had been near those entrances, no one had seen the llama before he burst into the council chamber. Increasingly ridiculous ideas—perhaps the llama had used a quauhxicalli that had rendered him invisible or allowed him to fly through an upper window, or some sort of alchemy had completely altered his appearance—had begun to fill Bogo's head and even the more sensible suggestions like the llama smuggling himself in with a delivery didn't seem possible.

"However he did it, it wasn't through alchemy," Tomas reported.

Blood had stained the hems of his robes, but he didn't seem to have noticed. Once he had agreed to actually look, he seemed to have done his best, sometimes calling for Jamie to retrieve something from his box or pour a vial. "Otherwise, all I can say is that the alchemical function of his torc looks completely normal. What's left of it, at least."

Bogo frowned, but he wasn't surprised. Torcs were incredibly complicated pieces of magic that relied on a combination of blood magic and alchemy, and tampering with them was supposed to be impossible. At any rate, even if the llama had tried to alter his torc it had obviously failed—his had made him suffer the same wound he had inflicted on Bogo, and from what he could remember the llama hadn't seemed surprised about it. In fact, the llama had seemed to be filled with nothing but hate and anger and he had clearly been willing to try assassinating the princess and die in the process. Even if he had somehow obtained one of the City Guard's torcs, it wasn't as though he would have been able to kill the princess without dying himself; the torc she wore would retaliate against any mammal who hurt her no matter what sort of torc they wore. Besides, the quauhxicalli he must have used had clearly been ripping his body apart from the strain it caused. Bogo had never seen anything like it, but...

"The city appreciates your service," Bogo said, all but automatically, for his thoughts had gone elsewhere.

"Get an expert on quauhxicallis to examine the body," he told Jamie as the jaguar scooped up Tomas and the alchemist's box.

Bogo was barely paying attention as the captain nodded crisply and let himself out of the room, because there was the beginning of an idea forming inside his head.

Whoever had masterminded the attempted assassination, it was clear that they had significant resources and access to powerful magic. The motive was more difficult to guess, but there was a certain former crime lord who had it all—money, quauhxicallis, and what was likely a powerful grudge. True, the Black Paw had never demonstrated access to quauhxicallis quite as potent as the one the llama must have used, but that was no matter. "My queen," Bogo said, "I need to go to the dungeons."

Queen Lana turned her chair around; she had stayed facing the other direction even after Tomas had finished his examination. Princess Isabel turned with her mother, and Bogo saw that the queen was still stroking her daughter's fur with one trembling hoof. "You think you know who tried to kill my daughter?" she asked.

"I have an idea of who had the means to do it," Bogo replied.

"Good," the queen said, and her voice was cold and hard, "You have my permission to do anything you need to do. Anything. Do you understand?"

"I understand," Bogo replied quietly.

It was, Bogo realized, not fear that made the queen's hoof shake. It was anger.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

The phrase "acta deos numquam mortalia fallunt" is Latin for "mortal actions never deceive the gods" and comes from the letters of Ovid, written sometime around the year 8 CE. I've also used Latin in some other parts of this story, since I think it gives some nice flavor to have a dead language generally used only in older works; I think it helps suggest the history of the setting, particularly in contrast to the occasional word in Nahuatl that suggests that language isn't really spoken any more either.

The reference to quauhxicallis that allow someone to perfectly mimic a voice is inspired by lyrebirds, which are incredible mimics. There are actually a fair number of birds that can imitate human speech, including parrots, but even crows can learn to repeat words.

City Guard member Jaime is a jaguar and comes from the Tecuani Barony, which is named after the Nahuatl word for "jaguar." This has come up a few times before, but not everyone in this setting has a family name per se. Some mammals do, but others use the name of the barony they come from in the place of it. As was the case for Judy, this indicates being a member of the family that rules said barony, although not necessarily any claim to ruling it.

Although eye-rolling has been documented as a gesture in use since the 16th century, its use as a sort of dismissive gesture didn't become common until about the 1950s. Before then, it was most frequently used during flirting to indicate interest. Based on the historical facts that influenced this story, I therefore decided to go with the more specific evil eye, which dates back at least 2000 years.

The creation of the philosopher's stone was the goal of most alchemists; the pursuit of this goal was referred to as the magnum opus (literally the great work). Alchemy was the precursor to modern chemistry, and as such is now a discredited pseudoscience, but alchemists still made a number of advances in chemistry in their efforts to create a substance that could transmute base metals into gold and create an all-healing elixir that could grant eternal life. In fact, the word "elixir" is derived from the Arabic word "al-iksir," which was used by 8th century Muslim alchemists to describe the philosopher's stone.

Although the supposed physical properties of the philosopher's stone vary somewhat depending on the source, I went with some of the more common ones: a philosopher's stone is red in color and quite dense. Some alchemists believed that there were two forms of a philosopher's stone; the incomplete form, which is white in color, could transmute metals into silver, and the complete form, which is red in color, that can transmute metals into gold. I decided to go with this version of the stone, where the creation of complete philosopher's stones is a jealously guarded secret of the Alchemist's Guild. The incomplete form of the stone is, however, responsible for the alchemical torches mentioned in this setting, as one of the uses attributed to the philosopher's stone is its ability to create eternally burning lamps.

As is suggested in this chapter, I imagine incomplete philosopher's stones to allow healing to proceed more quickly than it would unaided, but they can't simply fix any wound or cure any disease the way complete stones can.

This chapter goes into a little more detail on torcs, revealing that they combine blood magic and alchemy in order to function and that the torcs worn by the royal family are a step above the ones worn by the City Guard; a member of the City Guard couldn't simply murder a royal the way they theoretically could murder anyone else.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought.


	5. Chapter 5

Judy called for a stop once the sun had sunk below the crumbling ruins of the Outer Wall on the horizon, the fading light of day making their shadows stretch strangely across the blasted landscape. Although she hadn't quite spent an entire day traveling with Nick, as she had reached the Middle Wall close to mid-morning, she was utterly exhausted. Judy had traveled through the night the previous day to arrive so early, and being tired just seemed to make her pack grow heavier and heavier with each step.

It was, therefore, mildly irritating that her companion didn't seem especially bothered by the much larger and significantly heavier looking pack that he carried; quite the contrary, he had grown cheerier as the day wore on. Upon hearing the places she had gone in the city center during her training, he had clutched at his chest in mock despair, gently chiding her for her almost perfectly single-minded focus on joining the City Guard. Judy knew that he was, without a doubt, teasing her, but she couldn't deny that she had wished to see the sites he described. She had only ever passed the Royal Palace once, and that at night, so while the building's exterior had been lit up with the silvery glow of alchemical torches she hadn't been able to see anything of the grounds. The moat that surrounded the palace, and the vast gardens that surrounded the moat, were said to have representative examples of landscaping and plant life from each of the districts that made up the city-state, from lush rain forest to barren desert, and Nick had a talent for describing what she had missed.

It was pleasant to imagine the grandeur of the city center of which she had seen so little, particularly because the wastelands didn't offer much in the way of interesting sights once the Cozamalotl Bridge was behind their backs. The path had started curving towards the remains of the Outer Wall, but otherwise what surrounded them remained little more than the occasional strange glass-filled crater or pool of water surrounded by withered plants. It gave Judy the unpleasant impression that they had traveled no distance at all, that if she looked behind herself (and more than once, she had fought an irrational dread when she did so) the Middle Wall would be no more than a hundred or so feet away. It was receding, though, the War Gate's austere opening on the far side of the wall fading gradually in sharpness and detail until it was a gray smudge no more remarkable than the much more elaborately carved opening was when viewed from her family's estate.

As they set up their camp, Judy reflected that it was perhaps that similarity that made the wastelands so eerie. When she looked ahead to horizon and saw dozens of miles of bleak, dead, and pock-marked flatness between her and the remains of the Outer Wall, it was like a nightmare in which the comfort and safety of the lushly green Tochtli Barony and the seemingly impenetrable wall that ran around it had been stripped away. It was visceral proof that the same thing might happen to her home and everyone she loved if the city-state descended into the madness of an apocalyptic civil war once more.

Judy shook the thought away, touching the familiar smooth metal of her torc as she did so. It had been centuries since the last true civil war, and even if it hadn't been, torcs made any such fight impossible. If Nick hadn't been beyond the Middle Wall he wouldn't have even been able to take his own torc off, and the magic of the torcs worked just as well against someone who wasn't wearing one as someone who was. No threat, whether it came from inside the city's walls or beyond them, could possibly hope to succeed in conquering Zootopia, and Judy told herself it was silly to dwell on such gloomy thoughts. The entire time she had spent in training for the City Guard mammals had said that rabbits were too emotional, too weak in constitution and body, and the absolute last thing she would ever do was give anyone an opportunity to say she was proof of it. She had pushed herself hard, harder than any of the other cadets, and when she stood back to take in her perfectly erected tent it was one such example of how seriously she had taken her training.

While she had been thinking to herself and putting up her small tent, Nick had been assembling one himself, although not quite as quickly. As he finished, Judy couldn't help but ask, "Couldn't you just make yourself something with alchemy?"

Nick chuckled as he turned away from his completed tent, a half-smile across his face. "I could," he said.

"Why don't you?" Judy asked.

He paused a moment before answering. There wasn't anything that would burn around their campsite, and it wasn't particularly cold, so rather than trying to build a fire Judy had simply set up an alchemical torch, which lit up the surrounding area with a dreamy quality almost like moonlight but much brighter. In the steady and silvery glow Nick looked almost as though he was made out of something as intangible as a spider's web, his fur rippling in the occasional breeze. "You have a quauhxicalli to make you as fast as a cheetah," he said, "Why aren't we just running all the way to Phoenix?"

Judy's answer was almost immediate. "Quauhxicallis are too expensive to waste," she said, and it was one of the points the academy had drilled into all of the cadets over and over again.

Even the cheapest quauhxicalli was worth more than she earned in a week, and some of the more expensive ones—which as an ensign she had not been entrusted with—were worth more than she earned in a year. "Besides," she added, "Even a cheetah couldn't run all the way to Phoenix without stopping."

Nick's smile broadened a degree. "Here's a little secret the Alchemist Guild wouldn't want you to know," he said, and his tone was conspiratorial, just barely above a whisper.

Judy found herself, despite her sensitive hearing, edging a little closer. "Alchemy's tiring," Nick said, "If I made a nice little hut with a soft bed—and you'd probably want one for yourself, I'm sure—you wouldn't be able to get me up in the morning."

He laughed as he settled back, resting one palm against the ground as he examined the claws on his other paw. "Of course, if you want to _see_ what alchemy being performed is like..." he said, trailing off.

Although the look of good humor hadn't left his face, his green eyes sparkling in the light of the alchemical torch, Judy knew that he had seen completely through her. On the rare occasions when she had seen alchemists in the city-state's center, they hadn't actually performed any acts of alchemy; she had spotted one leaving a used book store and another entering a restaurant that looked so expensive even an entire garrison of the City Guard pooling their wages couldn't have afforded a single meal.

When Nick looked up from his claws, there was a slyly shrewd look on his face. "Maybe you think I _can't_ perform alchemy?"

Judy could feel her ears burning as he, once again, seemed to see exactly what she had been thinking. It had occurred to her—and she had insisted to herself that it wasn't simply because he was a fox—that perhaps Nick wasn't actually an alchemist. He didn't dress like one and the torc he had tucked away into his coat didn't have any kind of guild symbol on it. He had as much as admitted that he wasn't a member of the Alchemist Guild, and Judy had never heard of any mammal, other than ones who had lived centuries ago, who had performed alchemy and wasn't a member. And, if it was taken into account that he was a fox—only as a relevant point in that he couldn't have been a member of the Alchemist Guild at some point before getting kicked out—wasn't it far more likely that he would have learned blood magic if he knew any kind of magic at all? Every single famous alchemist Judy had ever heard of had been a prey mammal, and every single famous blood magician—including Oztoyehuatl the Betrayer himself—had been a predator. If Nick was undertaking some sort of elaborate ruse, unlikely though it appeared, it was her duty as a member of the City Guard to put a stop to it.

"No, no, it's not like that at all," Judy blurted, waving her arms frantically, "I'm sure you're really an alchemist; you seem—that is—you are really clever for a... But—but as a fox I'm sure a lot of mammals doubt you, and—and I know what that's... That is..."

He was silently regarding her, his amusement evident, and Judy lamely finished, "I would. But not if it's too tiring for you, or if you don't feel like it—you don't have to prove it to me or anything..."

"Well, how can I let your curiosity go unsatisfied?" Nick asked cheerfully, "It is very impressive, after all. Do you have a copper piece?"

Grateful that he didn't seem to be holding her interest against her, Judy dug into one of the little pouches on her belt next to her little collection of the most basic quauhxicallis. She hadn't brought much money with her for their trip, as she was relying on being able to use the City Guard's garrison in Phoenix for food and shelter once they arrived, but she did have a few silver and copper coins. She dug out one of the fat copper coins, with its side-profile view of Queen Lana III on one side and glowing silvery alchemical marks on the other, and gave it to Nick.

"Perfect," Nick said, palming the coin, "Now here's the boring part."

Despite his words, Judy found herself quite interested in his preparations since she had never seen anyone do anything similar. He didn't seem to be doing anything more than drawing lines in the gritty dust off the path away from their tents and the alchemical torch. With the aid of a string with weights at the end he completed a perfect circle about five feet in diameter and then, with surprising deftness, a square with corners that precisely touched the circle's perimeter. Once the lines were drawn he rummaged through his pack and Judy craned her neck to see what he had packed. She caught a glimpse of the contents of his pack—which seemed to be almost entirely composed of glass vials carefully swaddled in cloth, a couple of which glowed with the same silvery-white light as an alchemical torch—before he produced a candle and a rather mundane looking vial full of what looked like water. The vial of water he placed on one of the intersections between the square and the circle, and the candle on another. Rather disappointingly, since Judy had been anticipating some demonstration of his own magical powers, he lit the candle with what looked like an ordinary match that glowed briefly as he snapped it and the alchemy that imbued it engaged. At one of the remaining corners he carefully placed a pawful of dirt, and then he positioned the coin at the center of the circle and sat beside it with his paws on either side of it.

He sat silent a moment, his eyes closed, and a gentle breeze blew across the wasteland, bringing with it the smell of some rotting plant, just as Judy was about to ask what he was waiting for. She didn't know enough about alchemy to know what he was doing, but at the instant the breeze blew past the very quality of the air itself seemed to change. Judy could feel her fur standing on end, the way it had when a severe thunderstorm was about to roll through Tochtli Barony, and the mildly unpleasant smell of dusty grit and sickly plants she had come to associate with the wasteland was overpowered by the same sort of sharpness she associated with a lightning strike. She thought that she could hear something, near the very limits of her hearing, something high-pitched and somehow both distant and near.

Nick was still unmoving, his fingers splayed on either side of the coin, and as she watched the coin _changed_. The copper grew even duller, but it wasn't as though it was simply getting darker. Rather, even though it was well within the light of the alchemical torch it seemed simply to grow dimmer, blackening as it reflected less and less light until it was so perfectly black that it looked like a fathomless hole. An instant later, however, the coin began burning with its own inner light, and the transition was so sudden that Judy threw a paw over her eyes, which had dazzling spots dancing in front of them. The coin was brighter even than the alchemical torch, throwing Nick's fur into such sharp relief that he seemed to burn as though he was made of fire, and Judy saw that his own eyes were clenched tightly shut.

The sudden light from the coin faded gradually, the pure whiteness dimming as it took on a sort of jaundiced quality that made Nick look sickly in its light, but throughout it all the fox had remained motionless. The yellow light the coin produced turned orange as it faded out, and for a matter of seconds the coin glowed red like an ember before the light went out of it. Judy stared for a second, blinking the spots out of her eyes, and she saw how the coin had changed. It no longer had the dull gleam of a well-worn piece of copper; it was brilliantly and unmistakably made of gold. "Pretty good, wouldn't you say?" Nick asked, moving at last as he opened his eyes and scooped up the coin.

His voice had a certain breathless quality to it, as though he had just sprinted a fair distance, and he walked over to where Judy had stood to watch and dropped the coin into her paw. It was not, she realized, only what the coin was made of that had changed. It was noticeably smaller than it had been, although it seemed to weigh about the same in her paw, and the alchemical marks that had glowed on the back of the coin were now nothing more than engravings. Otherwise, the coin looked exactly as it had, from the profile of Queen Lana III to the dents and scuffs that had been in it before Judy had given it to Nick. "It's amazing!" Judy said, staring down at the coin, and she was awed at the magic that her companion had worked with such seeming casualness.

"You don't have to sound so surprised," Nick said, although he was smiling slightly, "I told you I was an alchemist."

"You're incredible," Judy said as she turned the coin over in her paw, looking at both sides, "You didn't even use a philosopher's stone!"

Nick modestly kicked at the ground. "A philosopher's stone does all the work for you, you know," he said, "It's not much of a demonstration when anyone could transmute any metal just by touching it with a philosopher's stone."

Judy nodded, supposing he was right although she had never seen a demonstration of either a complete or incomplete philosopher's stone for transmuting metals. Complete stones were more valuable than even the most expensive quauhxicalli and she supposed Nick's demonstration indicated why no one bothered using incomplete stones to transmute metal into silver; if an alchemist didn't need a stone to do the transmutation of metals into gold or silver it was a waste to use something that could be better used to help mammals recover from injuries or illnesses. "You know how to make a philosopher's stone?" Judy asked as the implication of what Nick had just said struck her.

She wondered if he had managed to achieve what only the absolute masters of the Alchemist Guild had, and was therefore somewhat disappointed by his response. "Can I make an _incomplete_ philosopher's stone? Yes, yes I can," Nick said, which Judy supposed was still impressive in its own right.

Besides, if he did know the secret to making complete philosopher's stones Judy doubted he'd be spending his time bidding on contracts at the very outskirts of Zootopia; he could have likely leveraged his knowledge into enough money to buy his way into the ranks of the nobility, and Judy turned her focus back to the transmuted coin. From the way that it had glowed at the end she had expected it to be hot, but it was if anything somewhat cold to the touch, as though it had been briefly dipped in ice. When Judy had the coin's reverse facing up, with the now inactive alchemical marks the mint had put on it, Nick added, "I did tell you I wasn't a counterfeiter."

Judy laughed; he was right that the coin would never be mistaken for an actual gold piece, as it was both far too small and of the wrong design. Of course, she realized with a frown, it was now also worthless as a copper piece. "Tell you what, though," Nick added, "Since I've ruined your coin, why don't I turn it into something useful?"

He plucked the coin from her paw and then scratched at his chin. "You have a carrot in that bag of yours, right?" he asked, nodding in the direction of where Judy had left it.

"How did you—" Judy began to ask, but Nick waved the question away.

"I could smell it," he said simply, and she supposed his sense of smell had to be rather impressive.

Judy had, in fact, brought a few carrots along as a treat; when she had been packing her bag she had been unable to resist. Curious as to what Nick would do with it, she brought him one of the carrots, which had a wonderful leafy green top—the best part, in Judy's opinion—and gave it to him. "I promise," Nick said solemnly, "That you'll still be able to eat this when I'm done if you wash it first. Or don't mind some dirt."

Before she could say anything, he tied a loose knot into the stem of the carrot and then placed it near the center of the square he had drawn in the dirt. With his weighted string and a straightedge he divided the square in half and then placed the golden coin in the half not occupied by the carrot. He then drew a complicated series of lines connecting the coin and the carrot, and once more placed his paws against the ground. The items he had placed at the corners of the square were still there, the stub of a candle still burning, and he closed his eyes again.

As before, the very quality of the air seemed to change, and the coin once more went through the same changes in color. The carrot seemed unaffected, however, and the coin didn't just change in color as Nick did whatever it was that alchemists did to change things. At first it was difficult to tell, as the change in the coin's shape seemed to begin just as it started glowing too brightly to look at, but it was no longer a flat disc; it changed itself into a cylindrical shape in a way Judy felt she couldn't adequately describe. It didn't look as though the coin was flowing like molten metal or folding like a piece of paper, but rather was somehow doing both and neither. The spots in Judy's eyes prevented her from seeing what the coin had turned into until Nick had plucked both the former coin and the carrot from the ground and placed them in her paws.

The carrot looked exactly as it had, but the coin had turned into—"A carrot," Nick said, sounding more out of breath than he had after his first transmutation, "Tell me that's not impressive."

It wasn't actually a real carrot, but rather a little golden one that was, Judy realized, a perfect copy at a much smaller scale. The golden carrot had the same irregularities and striations as the real carrot, and its golden leaves were so exquisitely detailed that she could just make out the delicate veins. Nick had, somehow, used the real carrot as a template and turned the gold coin into a miniature copy. He was right that it was impressive; Judy didn't think even the finest rodent craftsmammals would have been able to make a golden carrot so small and so detailed, and it had taken Nick perhaps two or three minutes total. "You can wear it on your torc," Nick said, gesturing at the little loop the knot in the golden carrot's stem formed, "If members of the City Guard are ever off duty, of course."

"Thank you," Judy said, "It's beautiful."

She carefully put the little golden carrot in one of the pouches of her belt. "But did it have to be a carrot?" she asked.

Nick laughed, quirking an eyebrow upwards. "For you, ensign?" he asked, "What else could it be?"

They passed a pleasant dinner together by the light of the alchemical torch, each eating their own rations—Judy didn't know if Nick would have enjoyed her vegetables, but she was sure she wouldn't like his preserved fish—before going their separate ways to their own tents. Nick had claimed to be worn-out by the alchemy he had performed, and it certainly seemed to be true enough; his normally half-lidded eyes had started to droop even more. It was only once Judy was in her own tent, admiring the little golden carrot, that another thought struck her. In Tochtli Barony, a buck would propose to a doe by giving her an ornament for her torc. Of course, that was really only a tradition within her family, and from what she had seen wasn't common at all in either the city-state's more populated center or any of the other baronies. Nick wouldn't have had any way of knowing, but still...

As Judy's eyes grew heavier, she thought she'd have to bring it up somehow and see how embarrassing he found it. His good-natured teasing couldn't go unanswered, after all, and as she fell asleep, tucked into her bedroll with the golden carrot lightly grasped in one paw, a smile had crossed her face.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Oztoyehuatl was first mentioned in the first chapter as a fox who lived long before this story started who is famous for being a coward and a traitor, and here we see that he was a blood magician referred to with the epithet "the Betrayer." This chapter's indication that, at least to the best of Judy's knowledge, all alchemists are prey mammals and all blood magicians are predators, also relates to the backstory of this setting, in which an army led by a sheep used alchemy to lay seige to the city and depose a predator emperor. It also highlights how unusual it is for Nick to be an alchemist, although he does demonstrate that he can indeed use alchemy and whatever his motives are he's not lying about that much.

I tried to continue to incorporate some more world-building for the magic of this setting; quauhxicallis are very expensive and certain ones are not given to low-ranking members of the City Guard.

The fact that the coinage of this version of Zootopia has the face of a living ruler on it is, historically speaking, pretty common. British coins have included the face of the current king or queen for many years now, and it was common in older empires to feature the ruler as well. The US is therefore somewhat unusual in that the US mint will not make any coins or bills featuring a person who is still living. It's for this reason that the presidential $1 coin series skips from Gerald Ford to Ronald Reagan; since Jimmy Carter is still alive he can't be featured on a coin.

In this setting, since alchemy is possible, I figured that it didn't make too much sense for them to be on the gold standard since alchemists could quickly produce vast quantities of it, devaluing the currency. I imagine therefore that this setting uses a fiat currency; the value of coins isn't fixed to anything and it only has value because the government says that it does and the public trusts it. As an anti-counterfeiting measure, coins in this setting have alchemical engravings to make them difficult to copy in much the same way that modern currency features a wide variety of measures from watermarks to holograms. The coins could theoretically be made out of any metal, but gold, silver, and copper have a long history of being used in coinage and I thought it'd make sense to continue it.

I thought it was a somewhat amusing contrast that Judy is clearly unimpressed with a match that would probably be rather impressive for anyone from our world, since it's engaged by a self-activating form of alchemy. I think it's one of the things that can be interesting about a setting with magic—if certain things are common in their world, they simply aren't impressive any more than the average person in the real world would be impressed by, say, a smartphone or a car.

When I plotted out how the system of alchemy worked in this setting, one of the things I wanted to avoid was simply copying the alchemy system from _Fullmetal Alchemist_. That setting, based on an alternate version of the early 20th century in which alchemy actually works, relies on alchemy arrays which are drawn by an alchemist and then activated by touching it and applying will. In that setting, alchemy generally isn't used to actually transmute materials from one element to another but rather to rearrange the atoms in an object into something else. Even relatively inexperienced alchemists in that setting are capable of manipulating the shape of what they transmute with relative ease, forming barricades, weapons, models, or the like. I'd certainly recommend it, as the series is quite good in my opinion.

Historical alchemists, however, didn't really draw magical circles and try to manipulate matter that way. Symbols such as the squared circle, which represents the creation of the philosopher's stone, were generally understood by alchemists to be metaphorical rather than literal magic; the idea was that the manipulation of matter would generally be done through more mundane methods such as mixing things together. However, it was also common for alchemists to believe that matter was made up of the classical elements as described by Aristotle: earth (which is cold and dry), water (which is cold and wet), air (which is hot and wet), fire (which is hot and dry), and aether (a divine substance outside the categories of warmth and dryness). The thought was that by altering the composition of those five elements within something you could change it. I decided that the way alchemy would work in this story is that the five basic elements would be used to manipulate the balance between warmth and dryness in something to alter its composition, with the alchemist supplying the aether to guide and manipulate the process.

The fire, water, air, and earth used in transmutations are thus really just an aid to the alchemist's focus, as is the circle; simpler transmutations can be performed with very basic circles while more complicated ones are easier with a more fleshed out focus. Very simple transmutations, such as the match, don't require an alchemist at all and can be triggered with an action anyone can do, such as snapping it in the case of a match.

The copper coin goes through the four stages commonly associated with alchemical changes by Western alchemists: blackening, whitening, yellowing, and reddening. This changes were sometimes associated with observable pheonomena; some alchemists believed, for example, that the way living things blacken as they rot suggested a beginning to the cycle they wished to start.

Gold has a density of 19.30 grams per cubic centimeter while copper has a density of 8.96 grams per cubic centimeter. As gold is nearly twice as dense as copper, for two objects—one of gold and the other of copper—to have the same mass, the one made of gold would be noticeably smaller if they were worked into the same general shape and were solid.

Rabbits are, of course, widely associated with carrots, although the root part is too high in sugar to be a healthy part of their diet long-term. They can also eat the leaves of a carrot, although whether they would enjoy that more or less than the root is, I suppose, to the rabbit's preference.

On another note, I tried my hand at creating my own cover art for this story; the results of my attempt can be seen on DeviantArt under the username WANMWAD.

The design is inspired by the squared circle, an alchemical symbol dating to the 17th century consisting of a circle inscribed in a square inscribed in an equilateral triangle inscribed within a circle. The design is said to have symbolized how the four classical elements (air, earth, fire, and water) interplay in the creation of a philosopher's stone. I embellished the design somewhat, but I tried to incorporate elements that alchemists believed in. The center circle was replaced with an ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail; the ouroboros was a classic symbol of alchemy representing the cycle of birth and death. In the interest of full disclosure, I did not draw the serpent but used a public domain image from Wikimedia commons. The symbols at the four corners of the square are the four classic elements previously mentioned, while at the points of the triangle are alchemical symbols that represent what the 16th century alchemist Theophrastus von Hohenheim (also known as Paracelsus) believed humans were made of: mind, body, and spirit, which he thought also corresponded to what all matter had: a combustible element (sulphur), a changeable element (mercury), and a solid element (salt).

The text circling the center is "igne natura renovatur integra," which is Latin for "through fire, nature is reborn whole" and was a phrase used by alchemists as an alternative meaning for the acronym INRI (standing for IESVS NAZARENVS REX IVDÆORVM or Jesus, King of the Jews) said to have been put on the crucifix of Jesus Christ. The leftmost text is "a minore ad maius," Latin for "from the smaller to the greater" and the rightmost text is "a maiore ad minus," Latin for "from the greater to the smaller." The bottom most text is "ordo ab chao," Latin for "out of chaos, comes order." I thought the combination of these three phrases was suggestive of the goals of alchemy to break matter down and remake it into the desired form.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought.


	6. Chapter 6

Although he was half-tempted to visit the dungeons while still wearing a torn and blood-soaked tunic—perhaps it would put the fear of the gods into the prisoner he wished to visit—Bogo grudgingly visited the armory to change. The irritating thing about politics was that appearances mattered just as much as actions, if not more so. If he was seen looking disheveled as he left the palace, every mammal he passed from guards and servants to nobles and their hangers-on would assume that events were out of his control. That assumption could easily become reality if enough mammals believed it, and so he changed as quickly as he could. The only concession he made to his own comfort was to leave off the cloak of feathers that was his right as a captain general; besides being awkwardly heavy and restricting the cloaks were frustratingly fragile, and the one he had dropped on the floor of the council room would need artisans to repair it. Still, the feathers on the bracelets he wore at his wrists and the embellishments on his torc showed his rank well enough, and the lack of a cloak made the macuahuitl and the sabre he chose to wear on his belt that much more obvious.

When he was satisfied that he would give off the impression he wanted, Bogo set off for one of the palace's exits (despairing slightly at just how many ways in and out of the building there were), and had managed to reach the Hall of Ancestors before being interrupted. The grim look his features seemed to naturally set themselves into tended to be proof enough against mammals frivolously wasting his time, and he had supposed that in light of an attempted assassination he must have looked particularly fearsome indeed, for a number of servants had all but jumped out of his way as if he was radiating a heat too intense to bear. That the mammal who interrupted him was Corazón was, in retrospect, not overly surprising; the lion was if nothing else a consummate professional in the art of finding those in power.

The Hall of Ancestors was an enormous room, and yet also one with very little in the way of free space; it was absolutely full of statues of the former rulers of Zootopia. The walls were covered with elaborately carved iconography of the old emperors and empresses, and some of the statues were even in that old style, the subjects curiously blocky and almost grotesque in their poses. Corazón had knelt in front of one of the largest statues, which was positioned in place of pride where no other statue could hide it, and he rose smoothly as Bogo entered. "Captain General," Corazón said by way of greeting, quite solemnly and seemingly without any surprise at encountering Bogo taking a shortcut, "I was just telling the prince consort that you saved his daughter's life."

Corazón gestured at a statue as he spoke, which depicted the deceased husband of Queen Lana, Princess Isabel's father Fernando the Just. Although the jaguar who had been recreated in stone towered over the other statues, all but the oldest of which showed sheep, it was no trick of the sculptor to make him appear larger or more imposing in death. Fernando had been about the largest jaguar Bogo had ever seen, which had always made the queen appear even shorter than she actually was by comparison. Bogo looked into the impassive stone face of the dead prince consort, which despite the sculptor's best efforts carried only a fraction of the wisdom that had seemed etched into Fernando's features, and then turned to Corazón. The lion's face seemed lined with sorrow, and while Bogo recalled that Fernando had considered Corazón one of his most trusted advisers, it was hard to forget that Corazón had a well-known talent for oration. It was, perhaps, one of the things about Corazón that he liked least; he never knew whether or not the baron actually meant what he said. His words always oozed sincerity and because of that seemed all the more false. Was he truly grieving the loss of a friend, or was it all just a carefully planned charade to get something he wanted out of Bogo?

The captain general didn't care for politics, but that didn't mean he didn't know how the game was played. He stayed silent, trusting that Corazón would continue, and at last the lion did after heaving a theatrical sigh. "It was the worst day of my life when he died," Corazón said, "Yours too, perhaps."

Bogo inclined his head stiffly, still without a word. The prince consort's death had not been fair, nor had it been quick. He had always been a particularly energetic mammal, a devoted husband and an absolutely doting father despite the demands on his time as a judge. Seeing how rapidly he declined after taking ill had been a terrible shock, as his muscles withered away and his fur dulled until he was little more than a wraith unable to do so much as leave his bed. Bogo had been there for all of it, screening each and every blood magician and alchemist selected to treat the prince consort and watching everything they did. After one such treatment, when even a complete philosopher's stone nearly the size of a hummingbird's egg had failed to achieve any improvement, the prince consort had beckoned Bogo over after the alchemist left. "I don't think you need to worry about assassins, Captain General," Fernando had said, and while his voice had been little more than a croaking whisper there had been the ghost of good humor in his eyes, "The tumors are doing quite well on their own."

Bogo had started to voice a protest, but the prince consort had raised a paw, which seemed larger than ever with how thin his arms had become, and spoke again. His voice had been no louder, but there was steel in it. "Let me be clear, Captain General. If— _if_ —someone is responsible for me falling ill, you are to do nothing without absolute proof. Nothing, do you understand? I don't want my legacy to be—"

Fernando had broken into a coughing fit at that point, but the point had been made. Although the prince consort had spent months too feeble to do much besides rest, he had never been stupid, and the tumors that burned his body from the inside out had not touched his mind. The city-state had been a spark away from civil war, all the various factions just waiting for an excuse to battle over old grudges in what the torcs would have made the bloodiest conflict ever fought. The prince consort was largely beloved by the populace, but there were the old families of sheep nobility who resented a jaguar joining the royal family and were likely entirely unappeased by Cencerro's appointment to the Queen's Council. So too were there the prey mammals who could trace their history back to the city-state's founding who thought putting a jaguar in a position of power was a step back towards the days of the emperors and their insatiable demands, and that was leaving aside the more opportunistic predator members of the nobility who were bitter about being overlooked when the queen married.

Similar fears were also, Bogo knew, why the prince consort had refused more radical treatment options; it was possible that the alchemists had been right and cutting out the tumors that had sprouted on his internal organs and in his bones before providing treatment with a complete philosopher's stone might have completely cured him. Then again, if he had died during the surgery public opinion might have turned against the Alchemist Guild. The blood magicians would have likely been happy to lead a whisper campaign against their traditional rivals by calling it deliberate murder, and the thought of the uneasy alliance between the two groups who controlled the very magic that kept Zootopia functioning failing was a sobering one indeed.

"I understand, my liege," Bogo had replied, and in that moment he had never hated politics more.

"Good," the prince consort had said, and he had slumped into his bed, not even his recent treatment enough to give him the strength to go on.

Bogo had turned to leave, considering himself dismissed, and to his surprise Fernando had spoken again. "If I am the victim of more than just poor luck," he said, "Whoever's responsible will go after Lana and Izzy, one way or another. Watch for that, Captain General."

Bogo had turned back to face the prince consort and nodded. "I promise, my liege."

Fernando had nodded weakly in return. "If that happens, Captain General, if someone is trying to claim power..." he said, his already feeble voice trailing off, "Find that mammal and dispose of them in whatever way keeps the peace."

His yellow eyes had been fever bright and his stare so intense that it entirely made up for his rail-thin and wasted appearance, as though he had reclaimed his former vigor through sheer force of will alone. Then his eyes had closed and his breathing had slowed, and Bogo had left the royal bedchamber as quietly as he could manage. It had been the last time he had ever spoken to the prince consort, who had taken a turn for the worse before finally dying, but even after six years Bogo had never forgotten the words. He had done his best to look into every mammal who was in or was moving towards the queen's inner circle; it had taken nearly a year for any male to dare bring up the possibility of the queen re-marrying, but Bogo privately suspected that she never would. The princess was another matter entirely, as she had no siblings, and mammals seemed to feel somewhat bolder in trying to extract an engagement in return for whatever concession the queen demanded.

Through it all Corazón had been a constant presence, and while he had never quite brought up his own son as a suitable match for the princess he had never failed to mention the cub or his achievements. Bogo considered the mammal standing before him, who had remained respectfully silent even as Bogo's own thoughts had drifted to the past, and spoke in a carefully neutral voice. "Worse than the day your wife died?"

Corazón had become a widower about two years ago, and while he had never made any move to suggest he had an interest in marrying the queen—or any other mammal, for that matter—it had not escaped Bogo's notice that the lion was perfectly positioned to do so. The queen trusted his judgement, no matter how soft-hearted it tended to be, and even the princess appreciated his input. If he took any offense at Bogo's implication, he gave no sign of it, his features resolving themselves into a somewhat rueful expression. "Not all political marriages are quite so blessed as that of our queen," he said, "We… tolerated each other."

Bogo grunted, somewhat surprised that Corazón would admit it so baldly, and he wondered if he had encountered an actual moment of genuine vulnerability from the council member. "We both loved our son, and that was enough," Corazón continued, with a slight shrug of his shoulders that was barely visible beneath his thickly embroidered clothes.

"Do you have any idea who might have tried assassinating the princess?" Bogo asked.

He had gotten sick of waiting for Corazón to get to whatever point it was he was building towards, and long experience had taught him that abruptly changing topics occasionally yielded results as the mammal being questioned found themselves caught off-guard. Corazón, however, was apparently a politician through and through, because he didn't seem so much as surprised at the question. "No idea whatsoever, I'm afraid," he said, and Bogo found himself surprised.

He had anticipated that the best cause scenario would have been for Corazón to stumble over his response, to give some indication that he knew more than he would willingly admit, and that the worst case scenario would be for the lion to simply name one or more of his political opponents as a possibility. Some of his surprise must have made it onto his face, because Corazón chuckled and clapped one enormous paw onto Bogo's shoulder. "If I named someone, and your investigation found it couldn't possibly be them, you would only suspect me more, Captain General, wouldn't you?" he said, and he was actually smiling, although there seemed to be something of a warning growl in his voice, "I can promise you I had nothing to do with the attempt, but beyond that… I suppose the question you ought to be asking is who has the most to gain from the princess's death. Are males who could take a wife really your only suspects?"

If the princess died, there would be no heir to the throne upon the queen's death, and the natural possibility was that the queen would be forced to marry and produce another heir. Then again, she might just as easily name someone as her chosen successor; it was a possibility that Bogo had not really considered as a motive until Corazón had implied it, thinking the likely motives to be either revenge or an effort to marry the queen. "They are not," Bogo said, and with one hoof he grabbed Corazón's paw and pulled it off his shoulder, "Thank you. I must be on my way."

"Of course," Corazón said, and gestured towards the door, "But if there is anything I can help you with, anything at all, you must let me know."

Bogo nodded brusquely and continued on his way, resolving to press Corazón further when he was finished with his present business.

* * *

The jail Bogo headed to was positioned well outside the grounds of the palace, and the almost palpable air of despair that it provided was all the more impressive because it had at one time been one of the grandest estates in all of Zootopia. Time and neglect had made the once finely engraved stone of the exterior crumble and become choked out by vines, and the grounds that had once been gardens had been completely leveled and left to nothing more than dirt. The estate itself was three stories tall, entirely made of thick stone blocks, and windows that had once been large and grand had been bricked up into narrow slits with heavy iron bars crossing them, weeping rust stains. The exterior wall that ran around the estate had been made even taller and a number of guard towers had been built, adding to the general impression of control.

As Bogo walked across the grounds, which were empty except for a miserable looking huddle of prisoners off in the distance under the keen eyes of several guards, he passed the only remaining sign of the estate's former owner. Near the entrance, looking rather forlorn on a crumbling marble plinth, was a statue. The statue was centuries old and so weathered that it was barely recognizable as a fox, but Oztoyehuatl the Betrayer's image was still there. Legend had it that the statue actually _was_ Oztoyehuatl; the story went that as punishment for his treason, alchemists had transmuted his body to stone as slowly as they possibly could, somehow managing to leave him aware but incapable of movement. Sometimes, it was said, the statue would even cry tears of despair. Bogo considered it all nonsense, the sort of story mammals only told each other to frighten themselves. It seemed more likely that Oztoyehuatl's death had come from having his beating heart cut from his chest, as executions had been done in the old days, but the story had a value of its own. No one wanted to go to Oztoyehuatl's Jail, as it was commonly known, and only the worst of the city-state's criminals got sent to it. There were cells designed to nullify any alchemy a prisoner might attempt as well as the far more common and mundane cells built to be completely escape-proof.

Indeed, once Bogo had crossed what had formerly been the grand entrance of the estate, which had only worn marble floors as evidence of its former grandeur, he hit the first barrier to any potential escape. The formerly large and open grand entrance had been divided using walls made using alchemy that ran from floor to ceiling and met each other without so much as a gap; there weren't even doors. The same technique had been used on the highest security cells, which were built in featureless cubes of thick stone that had only the smallest of holes through them for air vents. There simply wasn't any way for a prisoner to escape as there were no holes large enough for them to get through.

Of course, prisoners did need to be fed, and that was where the alchemists on the staff came into play. They would use alchemy to break the perfectly smooth walls to create openings, as one did for Bogo to enter the hallway that led to the cell he was interested in. The alchemist, a deer wearing the rank of a lieutenant on her torc next to the ouroboros that marked her guild membership, fell into step behind him, making absolutely no attempt at conversation. It felt slightly claustrophobic to be walking down the stairs that led into what had been Oztoyehuatl's blood magic laboratories before they had been repurposed and expanded into dungeons and knowing that was no way out. The opening the doe made had been sealed behind Bogo, leaving him to the smooth stone tunnels lit only by the silvery glow of alchemical torches. He walked purposefully towards his destination, passing some of the more mundane cells shut only with heavy doors of thick iron bars, and could feel the eyes of the occupants of those cells upon him as he passed. None of the varied mammals called out, the only sounds remaining the echoing ring of his hooves and the guard's hooves against the polished and reflective stone floor; most of the prisoners seemed too exhausted to do more than sit up on rough cots. Bogo, however, felt no sympathy for them, and from the hard expression on the guard's face he doubted she did either. The mammals they passed were, he knew, all murderers who had taken advantage of the limitations of torcs, as the ones too foolish to work out a way to kill their victim without dying themselves were obviously dead. Some of them had been fiendishly clever, building elaborate and subtle traps that their victims had fallen prey to, and some of them less so, as torcs didn't work against poison. Lesser criminals, such as forgers and thieves, were housed in cells above ground that actually had windows, and they were afforded the privilege of leaving their cells for exercise. The murderers were left to their misery in their cells, which Bogo wasn't sure he considered a mercy the way the queen did; execution would have been kinder.

Still, as he moved deeper and deeper into the dungeons, he supposed that the mammal he was going to see deserved every bit of suffering that could fit into the remainder of his life. It was easily the most secure cell in the entire jail, hidden away behind multiple walls that the deer had to form openings through, and although the prisoner had never been known to use alchemy his cell had still been warded against it, just in case. The glowing array of arcane symbols made Bogo's fur tingle as he stepped over it, and then he was at last standing in front of the cell, nodding at his escort to seal the wall behind him until his conversation was over.

Under other circumstances, Bogo might have found the cell comically oversized; he himself would have been quite capable of fitting into the great cube of thick diamond marred only by the tiny air vents in its sides so small that a single hair would barely fit. A huge number of alchemical torches blazed in the walls of the room the diamond cube was in from just past the barrier that stopped alchemy, banishing all shadows from the cell, and there in the very center was the prisoner, a tiny shrew.

He was dressed in crude clothes of a dull gray, with a lead torc at his neck, and yet when he sat up on his minuscule cot and looked in Bogo's direction he held himself as though he were dressed in the same sort of finery as a noble. The little shrew's eyes were invisible beneath his bushy eyebrows, and he wasn't quite as plump as he had been when he had started his life sentence, but he was unmistakably the mammal who had variously called himself Tlatoani or Big. Bogo knew his real name, though, and he wouldn't give the notorious criminal the satisfaction of using one of his inflated titles. "Alfonso," Bogo said, looking down at the shrew; he wouldn't show him even the modicum of respect by bending down to get closer to the shrew's level, "We need to talk."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

A macuahuitl is an unusual sort of weapon that consists of what looks a bit like a wooden cricket bat with pieces of obsidian set along its edge with gaps between them. Well-made macuahuitl used expertly seated and sharpened obsidian that were significantly sharper than even modern steel razor blades or scalpels. Macuahuitl were made in a variety of styles, much as swords are, from ones that could be wielded with one hand to ones that were about six feet (1.8 meters) long and required two hands to swing. Although there are no authentic macuahuitl from the Aztec-Spanish War left in existence (the oldest known macuahuitl is a 19th century replica), they were said to be so sharp that a skilled user could decapitate a horse with a single blow. Indeed, the macuahuitl had a number of traits that made it effective as a weapon; by striking with the edge or one of the flat sides, the user could use it to kill or to incapacitate. As Aztecs were frequently more concerned about gaining captives in battle than killing their opponents, this made it useful as a weapon that could first be used to injure and weaken an opponent (the gaps between the pieces of obsidian also helping to limit how much damage it did depending on how it was used) and then bludgeon them into submission.

Of course, all weapons have downsides, and macuahuitls are no exception. The pieces of obsidian could quickly chip or become dull while being used, and although an obsidian blade can hold a much sharper edge than a steel blade it is also much more brittle. This made the macuahuitl of limited utility against steel armor (except as a bludgeoning weapon), and the length and heft of the average macuahuitl meant that it was more suited for individual combat (which the Aztecs preferred) than for group tactics since it requires a fair amount of space around the user to avoid injuring allies.

Bogo's sabre is a less exotic weapon by Western standards, favored by European militaries from the 16th century through the 19th century. Sabres are effective blades for both slashing and thrusting, and while the modern sport of sabre fencing uses weapons that don't have very much in common with 16th century sabres the combination of slashing and stabbing attacks makes it unique compared to épée and foil fencing in which only stabbing attacks are valid. Personally, I prefer the épée of the modern types of European fencing, but the épée is a ridiculously specialized weapon at this point not really good for anything but dueling. Sabres, particularly those used in actual warfare, are pretty well designed to deal with unarmored or lightly armored opponents.

Considering Bogo's size and likely strength, he could probably easily wield an enormous macuahuitl with one arm, although as described I think it makes more sense for him to have a shorter more portable one. Rather than just being a matter of fitting on his belt, the City Guard presumably doesn't run into many scenarios where the captain general needs to cut an elephant in half with a single swing; I imagine macuahuitls would be used more for bludgeoning in this setting in much the same way a modern police officer might make use of a nightstick. The sabre is more ceremonial than anything else; during the Aztec-Spanish War, while the Spaniards used steel European swords, their native allies against the Aztecs were only allowed to use steel weapons with special permission, giving them prestige over macuahuitls.

Bogo's feathered cloak as an indicator of his rank is inspired by the real-world Mesoamerican tradition of working with feathers to create items of clothing, some of which were reserved for certain ranks of society. The feathers of the resplendent quetzal (a bird that certainly lives up to its name), for instance, were only permitted to be used for items made for the emperor or the gods.

Princess Isabel's father being a prince consort rather than a king suggests the type of royalty that this version of Zootopia practices, with the ruler being only the direct line descendent and not necessarily sharing that power with his or her spouse. This is currently the practice of the British royal family and is the reason why Queen Elizabeth's husband is Prince Philip rather than King Philip.

One of the things that I've tried to accomplish with this story, by having multiple viewpoint characters, is to show the difference in their perceptions. In the last chapter, Judy noted that there hasn't been a civil war for centuries and thinks that such a war couldn't happen due to the torcs. In this chapter, Bogo thinks that if the death of the prince consort was thought to be murder it could have very easily plunged the city-state into the bloodiest war it had ever seen due to the torcs. Their narration is colored by their own experiences and knowledge, and their opinions are going to be their own.

This chapter shows what I consider to be a fairly reasonable limitation of philosopher's stones, even of complete ones; they can't cure all forms of cancer. I figured that because of the way that cancer operates, which is essentially that defective cells reproduce uncontrollably, there's not always something for the stone to fix. Granted, the philosopher's stone might work in certain cases, because the body does have mechanisms to fight cancerous cells, but the prince consort was absolutely riddled with tumors. I imagine that his cancer had metastasized so severely that any treatment that didn't completely eliminate all of the tumors wouldn't be a true cure.

This chapter also indicates that torcs have their limitations, being unable to retaliate against poisoning and more elaborate means of murder that don't require one mammal to directly kill another. I figure that for just about any system there are ways around it, and this also shows that even if most murders don't require much police work, being essentially self-resolving, it's not as though the City Guard doesn't see any successful murders.

Whether Oztoyehuatl actually was transmuted into stone to become the statue in front of his former residence or if, as Bogo believes, it's simply a legend intended to frighten mammals, stories of statues that cry are not uncommon. There have been a number of statues, mostly of the Virgin Mary, that have been reported to shed tears, and the Catholic Church has investigated (and rejected) most of these claims as hoaxes. One occurrence, from 1953, was recognized by the church. In this setting, a world where supernatural powers follow understandable rules, it's not necessarily impossible.

The word "tlatoani" literally means "one who speaks" but less literally means "ruler." In the days of the Aztec empire, city-states were ruled by tlatoanis, who reported to the emperor. The shrew calling himself either Tlatoani or Big is, of course, this setting's version of Mr. Big, and my choice of the name Alfonso is inspired by the name I chose for his 1920s version in "…And All That Jazz," Alphonse Biggliani, which was in turn inspired by the notorious gangster Alphonse Capone. The next chapter from Bogo's perspective will go into his crimes, but next week it'll be back to Nick and Judy.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought.


	7. Chapter 7

When Judy woke up, it was to the mournful sound of the wind blowing across the blasted landscape of the Outer Baronies, the gentle murmuring of the grit against her tent forming an undertone to the eerie whistling of air across the craters. She had put away the alchemical torch she had set in their camp the previous night, and the only light was the warmly orange glow of the rising sun coming through the fabric of her tent above her. At some point in the night, she had dropped the little golden carrot that Nick had made her, and she carefully put it in one of her belt's pouches before going about her morning routine.

Judy had grudgingly accepted that, as a bunny, she would always be smaller and weaker than any of the other members of the City Guard (until or unless a member of a smaller species joined, at least), but that had only instilled in her a complete refusal to neglect her physical training. Judy doubted any other recruits had ever spent so much time exercising; a bear or an elephant might allow themselves to go a little soft and still be effective based simply on their size and strength, but she had to be as agile, smart, and strong as she possibly could be.

Nearly an hour after she had started, when she was just beginning to drill with her spear, the gentle snores that had been coming from Nick's tent abruptly stopped. Nearly half an hour later, when she had begun to pant with exertion, Judy heard the rustling of cloth before Nick emerged, stretching widely as he took her in. Judy knew how she must have looked, wearing her lightest clothes despite the slight chill of morning and carrying a spear, and the fox simply offered her a half-smile. "Morning, Ensign," he said, "Lovely day, isn't it?"

Although he was almost certainly being sarcastic, there was a sort of strange beauty to the Outer Baronies in the light of early day. The dust and dirt that covered most of the ground seemed to twinkle and glitter, forming wavy patterns that moved and shifted with each gust of wind like the surface of a lake. The ruins of the Outer Wall were hazy in the distance, but they were obviously much closer than they had been when they had left the civilized world behind, and despite the crumbling of the enormous blocks they still spoke to the incredible skill and ingenuity of the mammals who had crafted such a barrier to still stand more or less intact after both centuries of neglect and the cataclysm that had scoured the Outer Baronies. Judy could even see a smudge squatting in the shadow of one of the sections of the Outer Wall that was mostly whole that could only be Phoenix, although she couldn't make out any details.

"It is," Judy replied, and whether or not Nick heard the genuineness in her voice he simply nodded.

The fox was wearing the same bottle-green coat he had worn the previous day, buttoned up to its raised collar against the morning chill, but otherwise seemed to be both freshly dressed and groomed. His exposed fur gleamed like polished metal, with not so much as a strand out of place, and Judy realized that as she had been training he must have been brushing himself for his tail to be so faultlessly fluffy after a night's sleep. Still, he was a civilian, after all, and as he seemed perfectly capable of walking at the same brisk pace as her it was his own business how he spent his time when they weren't travelling. "That's quite some skill you've got with that spear," Nick said, gesturing with his head toward the weapon in her paw, "You train with that every day?"

It sounded like an honest enough question rather than teasing, and Judy nodded. "Every morning," she said, "You could practice with me, if you'd like. I've never sparred with an alchemist before."

Nick chuckled as he sat down outside his tent, gingerly curling his tail away from the dirt. "I'm not much of a morning mammal," he said, "Besides, I'm not much of a fighter, either."

"So you're saying you don't think you could beat me?" Judy asked, trying to say the words as smugly as she could, and was rewarded by a brief flash of surprise across her travelling companion's face before he smiled widely.

"Why, I don't know if I'd go _that_ far," he said, "I know secrets beyond the ken of most mammals."

He waggled his fingers as he spoke, inflecting each word with such an overly pompous air that Judy couldn't help but laugh. The Alchemist Guild had a reputation (one that was well-earned, from what she had heard) of considering themselves superior to mammals who didn't know magic, and it was obvious that Nick was quite familiar with that reputation. "So you're saying you _could_ beat me?" Judy asked, and Nick pushed himself to his feet.

"It wouldn't be fair right now, would it?" he said, "Not after you've spent all morning tuckering yourself out training."

"Real fights aren't fair," Judy countered.

Although she had to admit that at least part of her desire to take Nick on in a sparring match was to prove to him that no matter how he teased her she really did have what it took to be a member of the City Guard, the chance to spar with an actual alchemist was too rare to pass up. The City Guard did have members who had trained as part of the Alchemist Guild, but none of them had been a part of her class, which wasn't surprising considering how rare alchemists were. Only alchemists who came from extremely wealthy families, or those who were truly devoted to Zootopia, would join the City Guard; there were far too many other jobs they could get that were both safer and better-paying. Judy couldn't actually think of any crime she had heard of where the City Guard had been required to apprehend an alchemist, which made sense considering how uncommon and rich alchemists tended to be, but there was always a first time for everything. The idea of arresting a criminal alchemist was a fantasy that she would have never admitted out loud; she had joined the City Guard to help make Zootopia safer and better, not to become famous, and the thought was rather embarrassing. The City Guard did have _some_ alchemists, after all, and surely they would be the ones sent after a criminal alchemist, but still...

"Tonight, then," Nick said, interrupting her thoughts, "I suppose a friendly match is the least repayment I can give you for your charming company."

He winked at her. "Don't go easy on me," he said.

"I won't," Judy said, and thrust her paw towards him even as she swore to herself that she would absolutely win.

He shook her paw firmly, nodding his agreement. "Then let's get moving while the day is still young," he said.

It didn't take long for them to eat and pack up, and they had soon hit the road again. "I'm disappointed, by the way," Nick said, when they had barely gotten started, "Even out of uniform, you didn't wear the..."

He trailed off, gesturing vaguely at his neck rather than actually describing the little golden carrot he had made her. As part of her preparations to leave, Judy had cleaned herself up and changed back into her uniform, from the quilted red tunic and trousers to the gleaming steel breastplate and the feathered bracelets. It was true that even when out of uniform to exercise she hadn't worn the decoration, and she was happy to take advantage of the opportunity to return his teasing in kind. "Of course not," she said, trying and likely failing to keep a smile from her face, "I haven't decided on my answer yet."

"Your answer?" Nick asked, cocking his head to the side, "Your answer to what?"

"To your proposal, of course," she said, trying to making it sound as though it were obvious.

"Proposal?" Nick asked, his voice somewhat higher-pitched than it normally was and his tail obviously fuzzing out more than it usually did.

"Oh, you didn't know what giving a doe a torc ornament means?" Judy asked, and she was a little surprised at how well she was able to make her voice drip with mock sympathy, "Well, maybe a fox from the big bustling city center doesn't know how we do it out in the Middle Baronies, but in the Tochtli Barony bucks propose with an ornament they make themselves."

"Ah," Nick replied, nodding sagely, "Now I understand. I must simply be too handsome for you."

"Too handsome?" Judy repeated, quite a bit louder than was really necessary; it was amazing how quickly he regained his balance after something that should have left him stammering apologies for his misunderstanding and begging her to give the little trinket back.

"You agree, then," Nick said, "Of course, no bride wants her groom to be better looking than she is; that's simply a fact. Then again, I _am_ such a catch that you must be in absolute turmoil trying to decide if I'm worth it."

He shot her a grin. "I am, by the way," he added in a voice just above a conspiratorial whisper, and then more loudly simply said, "So why don't you just hold onto it until you do have an answer?"

Judy could feel her ears burning as she looked up at him. He had all but said that he thought she was ugly, and while Judy wasn't quite as vain as he seemed to be it was still rather insulting. Besides, it wasn't as though he himself was particularly attractive; his fur was a pretty shade of red-orange and looked luxuriously soft, especially on his tail, but his proportions were simply all wrong. "You'd really marry a rabbit?" she asked, which sounded rather lame to her ears but was unfortunately about the best she could come up with.

"Would you really marry a fox?" he asked slyly.

She supposed he did have a point; he had figured that she obviously wouldn't hold him to his unintentional proposal and then had taken the opportunity to tease her further. Judy promised herself that, when they did spar, she'd have to be careful to not allow him to throw her off-balance with his words.

After her rather disappointing effort to pay him back (which Judy vowed she'd make up for that night), the day passed rather pleasantly in his company. The wastelands were so flat that it wasn't particularly difficult to keep up a good pace, even with her pack, and the smudge that was Phoenix grew larger even if didn't become more distinct, the shimmering haze of the earth heating up under the sun keeping it out of focus. The day was only so long, however, and when the sun began to set again Judy once more called a halt. She didn't think that traveling at night would have been particularly dangerous, especially since they had alchemical torches and there didn't seem to be anything on the path that could be a hazard, but they had made such excellent time that they would easily reach Phoenix the next day. As Nick had said that the proposals for alchemical water purification weren't due for another three days, there didn't seem to be much of a need to push onward. Besides, she had been eager for their sparring match ever since that morning and couldn't wait any longer.

Per Nick's suggestion, they would fight outside their camp; she certainly didn't have any desire to accidentally ruin their supplies. Using the same length of string he had used the previous night, he drew out a much larger circle, perhaps twenty feet in diameter, and set an alchemical torch at the center. The rules that they had agreed to were simple: the first to score three touches against their opponent would win, and either leaving the circle or being forced out would count as a point for the other mammal. The light that the alchemical torch cast was bright enough, even with the sun fully set, to completely illuminate the arena, and Judy began her preparations.

It would have obviously been too dangerous for her to spar against a living opponent with her spear having a pointed tip, so she had replaced it with a blunted practice tip that was precisely as long and as heavy but not nearly as dangerous. She had also changed into a similar outfit to what she had worn that morning, leaving aside the heavy quilted fabric of her uniform and the even heavier steel breastplate; Judy intended to take full advantage of her speed.

Nick had, somewhat curiously in her mind, continued to wear his bottle-green coat despite how heavy and constricting it looked, but she told herself to be careful. There was no telling what he might be hiding under it and it would be foolish not to anticipate some kind of trick. He had left his pack behind in his tent, but he had brought a slim and long package wrapped in fabric. "You don't mind if I adjust this first, do you?" he asked, gesturing with his free paw at what he was carrying, "It's a little too sharp for sparring right now."

Judy shook her head, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she watched him walk to the middle of the circle and unroll his package. It was, she saw, what seemed to be an officer's sabre, but it was easily the most beautiful sword she had ever seen. Nick must have heard her appreciative gasp, because he looked up at her, smiling slightly. "I'm glad to hear you approve," he said, "I made it myself. Thought I might find someone in Phoenix looking for a shiny new toy."

Calling the sword a shiny toy was vastly underselling it. In the light of the alchemical torch the sabre glowed like a mirror, and its hilt was wrapped in what looked like rough shagreen. The guard had an elegant curve to it and was engraved with elaborate swirls and lines that formed abstract patterns around flecks of what looked like diamonds. The piece of cloth it had been wrapped in, by contrast, was simply rough linen that had a pattern of a square interlocked in a circle painted on it, as well as a complicated series of triangles, with the words "ne puero gladium" around the circle. When Nick placed the sabre precisely on the center of the cloth, Judy saw that the intersections of the triangles defined the edge of the blade. As he had when he had performed alchemy the previous night, he set a candle, a vial of water, and a pawful of dirt at three of the intersections of the circle and the square, and there was the same sensation of magic being performed as he focused his effort onto the blade.

His work with the sabre, however, seemed to take longer than either his transmutation of the copper coin into gold or the gold coin into the carrot, and the effects seemed far less impressive. Perhaps it was because the edge of the blade had been sharpened to incredible thinness, but it didn't seem to glow the same way that the object being transmuted the previous night. Still, when he approached where she stood and offered to let her inspect the blade, it was undeniably blunt. "Just so you know I'm not going for blood," he said cheerfully as Judy ran one finger over what should have been the cutting edge.

She held the sabre a moment longer than was strictly necessary to check its sharpness, trying to see if it was special in some way, but it looked like a perfectly normal, albeit extremely well-made, sword. The balance was perfect, although it was somewhat too large for her to grip comfortably, and Judy doubted many captains in the City Guard had a weapon so finely engraved. It did not, however, have anything that she recognized as being possible to use for alchemy.

By contrast, Nick barely glanced at her spear; he gave it a seemingly cursory heft, ran one finger around its tip, and then gave it back. Judy's mind was racing as he took his position opposite her just inside the circle. The greatest advantage she had always had, in her academy days, had been her agility. Being smaller than any of her opponents also made her faster to change positions and dodge, and it went without saying she was also a significantly smaller target. Nick's choice of weapon, as unexpected as she found it for an alchemist, meant she had another advantage she almost never did; her reach was much greater than his.

With a sabre, his best chance of winning would be to get so close to her that her longer weapon became a disadvantage by getting the point past himself. She, in turn, would have to try to keep him as far away as possible, striking when he was in range but not close enough to do anything about it. Judy had never fought a fox before, or at least, not since she had been a kit without any training, and she thought about the natural advantages he would have. Although Nick was so slim that she doubted he got much in the way of serious exercise, he would definitely be stronger and might have the leverage to knock her spear away with his sword if she positioned herself poorly. Otherwise, Judy told herself that his only real advantage was his alchemy.

From what she had seen so far, alchemists (or at least Nick) didn't seem to be capable of transmuting objects quickly enough for it to be of any value in a fight. It had always taken him a couple of minutes to perform his magic, and in a battle being fought in such a small arena she could easily make sure he never got the chance to use it. Then again, he had likely made his weapon with alchemy, and there was no telling what he had prepared before they ever met that he might have pulled from his pack and concealed in his coat.

The fact that he had made the sword also meant, she felt, that he might be lying about being inexperienced at combat; surely if he had the knowledge to craft such a finely-made weapon he knew something about how to use it.

"Ready?" she called, looking across the circle at her opponent.

If Nick was at all nervous about their sparring match, he showed no sign of it that she could see in the silvery light of the alchemical torch as he saluted her lazily with the sabre. "Ready," he called back.

Judy tightened her grip on her spear, feeling her heart pounding through her fingertips. It wasn't fear at facing a mammal larger than she was or nervousness at the prospect of what an alchemist might be able to do. It was, quite simply, excitement at the challenge, and Judy could feel a fierce smile forming across her face. "We go on three," she said.

"One…" she said, and her vision collapsed down until Nick was the only thing she could see; the distant lights of Phoenix and the twinkle of the stars in the moonless sky faded out of view as unimportant distractions.

"Two…" Judy said, and she tensed her legs, preparing herself to bound forward at Nick to cross the distance and strike before he had the chance to react.

" _Three!_ " she cried, and with her spear pointing straight forward, like an extension not just of her body but of her very will, she lunged.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

The fact that the City Guard uniforms in this story are red, rather than blue as the police uniforms are in the movie, is reflective of what the Spanish Army wore during the Spanish-Aztec War; officers wore bright red uniforms. Although blue is commonly associated with police in the present, there are plenty of modern exceptions, such as the distinctive dress uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Since in this setting the police also wear bracelets with brightly colored feathers and shiny steel armor, and at the very least captain generals have a cloak of feathers as part of their uniform, stealth is pretty obviously not a concern of the City Guard.

Shagreen is a type of leather made of untanned skin, and in this case would likely be made of sharkskin. Shagreen was historically prized for its quality for wrapping hilts, as its rough texture aids in gripping, and the fact that it isn't made out of a mammal product makes it a good fit for this setting.

The literal meaning of the Latin phrase "ne puero gladium" is "don't give a sword to a boy," with the obvious intended meaning that dangerous tools shouldn't be given to someone who can't use them responsibly. The use of alchemy to blunt or sharpen a blade is one of those little practical things that I thought made sense for the setting; if you can perfectly adjust the structure of something it seems like manually sharpening a blade would usually be the inferior option.

Spears frequently get short shrift in fiction (likely because swords are generally seen as being much cooler), but they were often used in real conflicts because they are practical weapons. Spears are easier to make and require less metal than swords, and they can be extremely effective when wielded by soldiers with little training. Judy accurately covers one of the key disadvantages of spears in her thoughts; if your opponent gets too close to you, the spear's length becomes a liability rather than an advantage since you can't get them with the tip. Another important disadvantage, albeit one that doesn't really come to play fighting outside in an open field, is that the length of spears makes them awkward for use indoors or on ships.

As always, thanks for reading! Having the chapter end immediately before Nick and Judy begin sparring is hopefully not too much of a letdown, but I thought the pacing worked better if that was split from the setup. As to which one of them will win, well, that will come out two weeks from now when the narrative jumps back to them. I'd certainly be interested in hearing who you think will emerge victorious!


	8. Chapter 8

"Captain General, you honor me with your visit," the little shrew said.

His voice had a gravelly quality to it that belied his diminutive size, but not even the cultured and deliberate smoothness he spoke with could quite hide that the Old Tongue had been his first language. His accent was slight and mildly nasal; Alfonso had the voice of a merchant who had pulled himself up from nothing to the highest ranks of society outside of nobility. With great delicacy he stood up, pulling at his thin prison tunic to straighten it as though it was made of cloth-of-gold, and looked gravely up towards Bogo. "Your family is well, I hope," he continued, "There is nothing more important than family."

His words were, as they seemingly always were, as gentle and soft as silk, but Bogo didn't think he was imagining the implied threat that lurked beneath them. Alfonso had proven himself, over a long and violent career, to be as ruthless as he was devoted to his own family. Bogo had seen it for himself, nearly thirty long years ago, when their paths had first crossed. That Alfonso had stuck in his memory had, for some weeks afterwards, seemed strange to him, a quirk of memory when it had not even come close to being the worst part of that day. With time, though, Bogo had eventually realized what it was that kept his first memory of the shrew so fresh. He had delivered terrible news to many mammals over the course of his career and had seen mammals react in every possible way. There were those who denied it, those who wept, even those rare few who uselessly threw themselves at him, their grief turning into anger at the mammal who had delivered the news. Alfonso, however, had given no outward reaction to hearing that his brother Miguel had died, even as his mother, sister, and his brother's wife collapsed into each other weeping helpless tears. His face—thinner and with somewhat less bushy brows in those days—had remained stony as he asked a single question in a voice with an accent that had been much thicker. "It was an accident, you are sure?"

At the time, Bogo had thought it to be an accident, the sort of senseless tragedy that the unfeeling magic of torcs could and occasionally did cause. An elephant, drunk as a rabbit off octli, had stepped on a shrew, whose torc had made the elephant suffer identical injuries. Bogo had been one of the first members of the City Guard to the scene and he knew that he would never forget it. Bogo's partner had resigned nearly immediately afterwards, and Bogo couldn't blame him, because what they had seen had been the stuff of nightmares. If it hadn't been for the size of the remains—what was left couldn't be called a body—and the gleaming yellow-white bits of ivory left from the tusks like islands in a sea of red it would have been impossible to identify that the mammal had been an elephant. Gore had splattered up the sides of the buildings on either side of that narrow street, blood running down the gutters and unidentifiable pieces clogging drains swarming with buzzing flies. The smell, Bogo knew, would never leave him; the rich coppery scent of blood had hung over the scene like a haze, impossibly strong and yet not strong enough to overcome the far worse scent of everything that had been in the elephant, from the pungently sour and yeasty smell of octli (which even decades later Bogo still couldn't drink) to the harsh and nausea-inducing scent of excrement.

It had taken some time to find the even more mangled remains of the shrew, and dreams of digging through the elephant's remains had haunted Bogo for months afterwards, a task that had taken hours stretched out infinitely until it seemed it was all he had ever done or would ever do. The sensation of finding the shrew's torc, slick and grotesquely warm even in the cooling charnel mess, had brought about a nearly equal sense of revulsion and gratitude; it had been obvious what had happened to the elephant and after finding the poor victim that had been stepped on cleaning up the mess would be someone else's problem.

After cleaning up and contacting the next of kin, a task made possible only because of the engravings upon the torcs of the elephant and the shrew, there should have been nothing left for Bogo to do except try to move beyond what he had seen. The question Alfonso had asked, however, had haunted him nearly as much as the gore. There was no law saying that rodents and other small mammals had to stay within the confines of the New Quimichin Barony, of course, but it was still rather unusual for one to be wandering around a part of the city populated mostly by elephants, particularly one who had no reason to be there. Miguel, like his brother Alfonso, had been an unremarkable insect farmer, a delicacy not usually favored by elephants. The elephant himself—Hector de la Plana, a name Bogo would never forget—had lived in a house that was rather large and grandly furnished for a middle-ranked civil servant, and none of Hector's family or neighbors thought it was in his character to drink to excess, although he had seemed rather stressed to them shortly before his death.

Bogo hadn't learned it all at once, of course—he had puzzled out the pieces over the course of months, continuing to investigate on his own, slowly at first and then with a nearly obsessive focus as every little detail that pointed to foul play came out. There was the canid four eye-witnesses had seen leaving the scene of Miguel's and Hector's deaths, a canid just as out of place on Savanna Street as a shrew. There wasn't quite any agreement from those witnesses on whether the mammal had been male or female, or even whether it had been a coyote, a wolf, or a fox, but they all said that despite being painted red with blood it had walked calmly and purposefully towards a nearby alley. There was the distribution of Hector's possessions among his heirs, which revealed quite a bit of expensive finery he simply shouldn't have been able to afford. There had been the way that Miguel had simply vanished shortly before his death, his last known destination being to arrange a contract with a restaurant catering to anteaters.

What it had all pointed to was that Hector de la Plana had been accepting bribes at his job until, at some point, he hadn't. The mammals paying those bribes had seemed to take exception to that, and Hector must have known it, the stress driving him to drink. Miguel had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, kidnapped by mammals who needed someone small enough to be completely crushed under an elephant's foot.

When Bogo had at last identified the canid who had positioned Miguel under Hector's foot, a male coyote suspected of being a member of the Six Brothers, his commanding officer had considered it a job well done. The coyote had been arrested, Bogo had received a promotion to captain and a transfer across the city, and that had been that. Until, of course, other members of the Six Brothers, once the most notorious gang in all the city, had started dying in a variety of unusual ways, but Bogo shook the thought aside. Seeing Alfonso again had dredged up memories he didn't like dwelling on, and his answer to Alfonso's comment was sharp. "Quite well," Bogo said, "It would be unfortunate if that changed."

Alfonso nodded slowly. "It would," he said, but whether it was an apology for the implication or simply an acknowledgement of fact was impossible to tell.

"I have not had a visitor since my sentence began," Alfonso continued smoothly, "To what do I owe the honor?"

Bogo was struck by how poised the shrew remained, as though they were negotiating a minor business contract rather than being on either side of an interrogation. He had carefully planned out how he wanted to question Alfonso on his trip to the cell, and rejected a number of potential approaches. He was sure that suggesting that Alfonso's daughter had been taken into custody would work quite well—but only if it was true. Unfortunately, Alfonso had apparently had the foresight to see her to safety before his own arrest, and as of yet the City Guard had come up with nothing in their search. Alfonso was not stupid, though, and any trick was unlikely to work on him. In the end, Bogo had decided to go with the simplest possible approach, and so he said, "Someone tried assassinating the princess."

Alfonso's eyes became briefly visible as they widened in surprise and his heavy brows shot upward, but they quickly vanished again. "You suppose I might have been involved," Alfonso said blandly.

"Yes," Bogo said, "The queen has given me permission to take any action I think appropriate to find the mammal responsible."

After a brief pause, Bogo added, as ominously as he could manage, "Any. Action."

"We both know you are an honorable mammal, Captain General," Alfonso replied, "Do not insult me with such obvious—"

"This isn't a game!" Bogo snapped, banging one hoof against the thick piece of diamond that separated him from the prisoner, "Don't think I won't do what I have to."

Bogo immediately regretted losing his temper, and not only because his fingers were throbbing painfully from the force he had struck the unyielding barrier with. Giving in to his anger was giving Alfonso control of the conversation, and giving the prisoner the advantage was a disaster waiting to happen. "I cannot tell you what I do not know," Alfonso said quietly, "I have learned this, although perhaps you have not."

Bogo supposed that if there was any mammal who knew about the results torture provided it would be the former gang leader; some of the mammals who had crossed him had ended up almost as badly off as Hector de la Plana. There were weaknesses in torcs that even civilians could take advantage of, and Alfonso had been creative enough to find them. "Your stay here can be even more unpleasant," Bogo said, reaching down deep to find the well of calmness and authority he relied on, "I can authorize bloodletting."

Generally speaking, the jail only took blood from those prisoners who belonged to species that had attributes that made their blood useful for quauhxicallis. Prisoners did, however, tend to be more compliant when they were weak from blood loss, as most of the ones Bogo had passed on his way to visit Alfonso had been, and his sense of honor had no qualms about ordering it. "Do what you must to fulfill your duty," Alfonso said, "I understand. It is the burden of mammals such as ourselves."

Bogo thought that he understood Alfonso perhaps as well as any mammal could, and he thought Alfonso meant the comparison honestly enough. Bogo had needed to understand Alfonso because there had been no other way to combat the Black Paw. Bogo had even swallowed his own pride and given Leodore Corazón a major political victory by, for the first time in Zootopia's long history, incorporating the New Quimichin Barony into the overall City Guard rather than allowing the little lords (both physically and in terms of political power in the greater city-state) who had previously overseen the district's security to run it according to their whims. Officers from the New Quimichin Barony had no place in the greater Zootopia City Guard, of course, but they had their uses, and a better understanding of Alfonso when he had been known as Tlatoani had been one of them.

In the New Quimichin Barony, Alfonso had not been feared or hated; he was widely loved by the mammals who saw him as standing up to the corrupt lords who ran the barony as they pleased with almost no oversight. By becoming a crime lord even more vindictive and cruel than any of the othersin Zootopia, he had completely put an end to the practice of other gangs kidnapping small mammals to use as murder weapons the way his own brother had been used; he had given the mammals of the New Quimichin Barony what they had wanted most. Alfonso had promised safety and stability, and the costs he asked were so small in comparison. What did it matter, if mammals larger than the residents of the New Quimichin Barony suffered? It was only the larger mammals getting what was coming to them, after all, the larger mammals who had carved out so much room for themselves and so little for those smaller than them.

Their grudge stretched back generations, to when the original Quimichin Barony had been obliterated along with the rest of the Outer Baronies in an alchemical apocalypse unlike anything that had happened before or since. The New Quimichin Barony, it was said, was a poor imitation of what had been lost, although of course there was no one alive who could make an honest comparison. Perhaps it had been no better, but Alfonso had sold the mice, shrews, voles, and other tiny mammals of the New Quimichin Barony the dream of it, that with hard work they could surpass their ancestors. He had, in short, taken on the improvement of the New Quimichin Barony as his duty and his burden, in much the same way that Bogo had taken responsibility for every mammal in the city-state when he had accepted the rank of Captain General.

The difference between them, though, was not something that had ever cost Bogo any sleep. No matter what Alfonso or any of his supporters said about his purpose or intentions, Bogo knew that the shrew was driven by the anger he had seen but not quite recognized when they had first met. Alfonso hid it as well as he did his accent, but it was always there, fury turned cold and sharp by time. He had taken his revenge on all of the mammals even remotely responsible for his brother's death, and when there had been no more vengeance to have he had not stopped.

Bogo, however, knew when to stop. Torturing Alfonso would give him no pleasure—the day he delighted in inflicting pain, no matter how well it was deserved, was the day he would no longer be fit to serve as Captain General—and it was his duty to serve the queen's _needs_ and not her _wants_. No matter how badly she wanted someone to pay for attempting to murder her daughter, what she needed was for the culprit to be caught. No more, and no less. "It's the burden of a parent," Bogo said slowly, "If someone attempted to kill your daughter, would you do any less?"

Alfonso considered the question for a long moment. "I could not," he said at last.

Bogo waited, choosing his next words carefully. The shrew had not quite volunteered to help provide answers, but he also had not quite closed himself off from saying anything more. "The assassin used powerful quauhxicallis," Bogo said, "The most powerful I've ever seen."

"Powerful?" Alfonso echoed, his tone thoughtful, "Describe, then, what made them so powerful."

Although the shrew was not, to Bogo's knowledge, a blood magician, he had employed many at the height of his power. The quauhxicallis manufactured by the Black Paw had been among the strongest available, and Alfonso had always struck Bogo as the sort of mammal who had made it his business to understand his business. Bogo described, in as much detail as he could, how rapidly the llama had moved, how he had seemed to exceed what his body could handle. When he had finished, Alfonso had remained silent for a while. "Quauhxicallis are more powerful if the sacrifice is made willingly," he said at last, "Did you know this?"

Bogo nodded; it was why quauhxicallis made from prisoners weren't distributed to members of the City Guard, and also why the ones they did use were so expensive even with members being frequently tapped for volunteers. It was also, Bogo supposed, why the quauhxicallis made by the Black Paw had been so strong; Alfonso had not been lacking in mammals willing to sacrifice for him. "I have heard that quauhxicallis may be made with something stronger than blood alone," Alfonso continued, "They may be made with a life."

"A life?" Bogo repeated, equally horrified by the idea as well as by how calmly Alfonso described it.

Sacrificing mammals to create quauhxicallis was said to have been what made the armies of the old emperors so powerful; each mammal had fought with the strength and abilities of dozens or more mammals. The warrior Xiuhcoatl, it was said, had fought with the hearts of a hundred mammals, all willingly given, and had defeated nearly ten thousand soldiers sieging the Inner Wall alone before falling in battle herself. Even if the story was an exaggeration, as Bogo thought it must be, it showed the barbaric depravity of Emperor Ocelotl that had been outlawed for centuries. "Then someone killed a cheetah to make the quauhxicalli the llama used," Bogo said, and Alfonso shrugged slightly.

"It is not impossible," he said, "It may have been done beyond the Middle Wall."

Besides Phoenix there simply wasn't much in the Outer Baronies; there were no other settlements and no resources worth speaking of. The mammals at the gates did, however, dutifully log all the mammals who came and went, and Bogo had the beginning of an idea. Phoenix was the logical place for a cheetah to willingly sacrifice him or herself. Perhaps that cheetah had been a longtime resident of Phoenix, but it seemed just as possible that a deliberate trip had been made there for the purpose of fulfilling the sacrifice. "I have names that may be of some help to you," Alfonso said, interrupting Bogo's thoughts, "None of my blood magicians would do such a thing, but I know of others."

Alfonso must have read the obvious question on Bogo's face—what could possibly make him trustworthy—and he continued speaking. "I have never thanked you for finding my brother's murderer. I should pay my debt now, on one condition."

"What's that?" Bogo asked.

"I should like to know if my daughter is found," Alfonso said, and for the first time the shrew's composure had cracked.

A flicker of exquisite misery crossed Alfonso's face, full of the pain and despair only a parent could know. Alfonso, Bogo realized, was admitting that he had not succeeded in spiriting his daughter away after all. She had made her own escape, and not knowing what she was doing, whether or not she was safe, must have been eating away at him. Another mammal might have cracked the instant his forced isolation from other mammals had ended, begging and pleading for help and promising anything in return, but that wasn't who Alfonso was. It wasn't that he didn't love his daughter, because Bogo thought Alfonso loved and cherished her above anything else he had, but because it was in her best interest if the City Guard thought her location was something Alfonso alone could give up.

"If she _is_ found, she can tell you herself," Bogo said, "There's no warrant out for her arrest."

It was, strictly speaking, not exactly true, but it would be easy enough to change; as Captain General Bogo had the power to ensure she would suffer nothing more than questioning.

"Do you swear this on your honor, Captain General?" Alfonso asked, his voice low.

"I swear it on my life," Bogo replied, as forcefully as he could, and the shrew nodded.

"Do you have something to write on?" Alfonso asked, "I have much to tell you."

Bogo pulled out a small bound book, and once he had settled himself to take notes, the former gang leader began to speak.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

The Old Tongue, in this story, is Nahuatl; I imagine that the translation convention is in effect and whenever the characters are speaking English they're actually speaking Spanish.

Cloth-of-gold is a real material that dates back thousands of years, and was historically made by wrapping a strand of fiber (typically silk, but sometimes also wool or linen) with a finely drawn band of gold, and then weaving the strands together. Cloth-of-gold is therefore quite heavy, as it contains gold, and due to the expense of making it was largely reserved for nobility in the past. It's also possible that the Greek myth of the Golden Fleece was inspired by the practice of making cloth-of-gold, although there are several other plausible theories.

Octli is the original name for the drink now known as pulque, which is made of fermented agave sap. The drink is milky in color and has a viscous consistency, and while it is deliberately manufactured the sap of the agave plant can also naturally ferment within the plant. The consumption of pulque was strictly controlled in the pre-colonial days of Mexico; it was a drink reserved for elders and priests, but following colonization became much more frequently consumed. Pulque does have a somewhat sour and yeasty smell; I can't say that I'm a fan of it, but to each their own when it comes to libations.

Arctic shrews, in real life, subsist largely off of insects, and I figure farming insects in the world of Zootopia, even in an AU, can be a decent business.

Bogo's narration considering the elephant as drunk as a rabbit is in reference to the Centzon Tōtōchtin (meaning, literally, "four hundred rabbits"), a group of divine rabbits in Aztec mythology who go around having wildly drunken parties. I figured it made an interesting stereotype for rabbits in this version of Zootopia; not only are they looked down upon as being weak but they're also considered inveterate drinkers. It gives another dimension to why Bogo isn't fond of the idea of a rabbit member of the City Guard, too; like his film counterpart this version of Bogo has his own prejudices.

When describing what happened to Alfonso's brother, my goal was to get across the horror of it without going too far; hopefully it worked in that respect. Fairly early on in this story, reader CorvidaeHakubi asked what would happen if a larger mammal stepped on a mouse. This chapter really answers that question in terms of how poorly it would end for both mammals, as the magic of the torcs would cause the larger mammal to suffer identical fatal injuries.

In real life, the voice actor for Bogo, Idris Elba, is 46 years old. I figure in this story Bogo is around 50 or so, and thus rose through the ranks pretty quickly, putting his promotion to the rank of captain in his early twenties.

The New Quimichin Barony is named using the Nahuatl word for "mouse" and is essentially this setting's version of Little Rodentia. In the movie, really the only information that we know about Mr. Big is that he's a parody of Don Corleone from the Godfather, and considering that this is an AU I took some latitude in how I interpreted his past. This chapter directly relates a lot of it, including what can be seen as his origin, although it doesn't cover much of his rise to power. I figured, though, that he's most interesting as a villain who doesn't see himself as a villain; he's pretty clearly done terrible things in the interests of protecting the residents of the New Quimichin Barony and doesn't show any obvious remorse.

This chapter describes two of the sources for the blood used to make quauhxicallis: prisoners and members of the City Guard. I thought these were logical enough sources of blood, and this chapter also expands a little on what makes quauhxicallis work. The idea of them being more powerful if the animal providing the blood makes the sacrifice willingly is inspired by the way Aztecs practiced human sacrifice, in which those being sacrificed often (although not always) submitted willingly. It also illustrates why alchemy is held in higher regard at the time this story is set; the most powerful means of making quauhxicallis is illegal and (rightfully, I think) considered barbaric, and I don't think it's much of a stretch for a similar disdain to accompany the field of magic as a whole.

The word "Xiuhcoatl" is Nahuatl for "turquoise serpent" but less literally means "fire serpent." The Xiuhcoatl was both a mythological creature as well as an atlatl (a spear thrower) wielded by Huītzilōpōchtli, the primary Aztec god of war.

Warrants, including arrest warrants, have been used for a very long time, although the issuing authority depends on the type of government. In a monarchy, such as this version of Zootopia, warrants could be issued by judges or by the crown, but Bogo's confidence in being able to ensure Alfonso's daughter doesn't come to any harm suggests that the City Guard, as a military force, has a significant amount of power in the legal system. Warrants have sometimes been broadly used; the reason for the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, for instance, is that before the American Revolution British customs officials had sweeping powers to conduct searches of private property under extremely general warrants.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought.


	9. Chapter 9

As Judy rushed across the dueling circle, she was rewarded by the sight of Nick's eyes noticeably widening in apparent surprise at the ferocity of her charge. Her lunge took her across the distance far too quickly for anything like complete thoughts to cross her mind, but it felt as though all of her training and practice had been distilled down to the point where words were completely unnecessary. Nick was holding his sabre in his left paw with his left foot leading and his body turned to face her, and without even needing to think about it she adjusted her angle of attack to go towards the gap in his defense.

Her instructors would have been proud of how cleanly she accounted for him being left-pawed; after a number of painful strikes to the elbow from a left-pawed goat who had been one of her class's sword masters she had drilled herself in how to position herself just so—veering out a little to the right and aiming for the outside—that her follow through was perfect. If Nick had been even a hair slower the blunt point of her spear would have caught his right shoulder, but he dodged smoothly to the left, bringing up his own blade as he did so.

Judy had advanced a step when he dodged before planting her feet in the gritty dirt and halting her progress; even so Nick had just managed to get into range where his sword might actually be able to touch her. However, as Béla, that gruff old goat of a fencer, had been fond of saying, something that _almost_ hit and a copper piece was worth a copper piece. Judy's counter was just as perfectly timed as her strike had been, bringing the end of her spear that didn't have a tip up and knocking Nick's sabre aside before making a satisfying contact with his gut. He barked a sort of short cough and stumbled, but he hadn't had the wind knocked out of him and Judy knew she had modulated the amount of force she had used perfectly to avoid injuring anything but his bloated pride. She retreated to her edge of the circle, balancing herself on the balls of her feet as she waited for him to do the same.

Judy considered what she had learned from her first point. No matter what he might say, Nick's technique showed that he had some training in how to use a sword; the way he had dodged her first strike had proved it. He hadn't done so with the clumsy awkwardness of a novice, but had side-stepped so smoothly that it was obvious he knew what to do. After that display of fencing technique, his failure to react in time to her counter was a bit more difficult to judge. Could he have been playing with her, willingly giving up the first point to better judge her own reactions? He was obviously clever, and while just as obviously all foxes weren't necessarily tricksters it didn't mean that he wasn't trying to trick her. He had already lied about his experience as a fighter and it didn't seem like much of a stretch to figure he might be hiding as much of his own skill with a sword as he possibly could. He also hadn't so much as tried, so far as Judy could tell, to do anything with alchemy. Then again, Nick _was_ left-pawed. He might have been able to rely on how unfamiliar most fighters were with fighting someone left-pawed so much that he had no idea what to do against someone who had actually properly trained for it.

As Judy looked across the circle at Nick, her mind running around and around as she tried to consider all the angles, he simply smiled widely. He did not look like a mammal who had been caught off-guard; he seemed as smug as ever, as though he had been the one to score the first point and not Judy. Then again, maybe he was just putting on a strong front to try to get inside her head and shake her confidence. He wouldn't succeed of course—but why did he seem so nonchalant?—since Judy had seen enough—but had it only been what he _wanted_ her to see?—that she was simply better—or was he trying to lull her into a false sense of security?—at fighting than he was.

"That was a good point, Carrots," Nick called out, drawling his nickname for her, "You've really got quite the arm with that spear."

He made a show of rubbing, with his right paw, the spot where she had struck him; Judy couldn't help but notice that he had allowed his left paw, still lazily holding his sabre, to remain casually at his side. "I'll be feeling that one tomorrow," he added, with a wink and an exaggerated wince that went from the tips of his ears (which splayed pathetically outwards) to the end of his tail, which shimmied and shook as his body did.

Somehow, he had managed to make words that were objectively compliments and had no obvious hidden meaning sound almost teasing but not quite condescending; he had the air of a parent impressed by a precocious kit. Judy ground her teeth together, telling herself to ignore the jibe. She was better than him and no amount of teasing could make up for his lack of skill unless she allowed it to. "Ready?" she asked, and she thought her voice was remarkably neutral.

Nick's grin, however, widened a degree as though she had betrayed her true feelings. "Any time," he said.

After another three count, Judy advanced, not nearly as quickly as she had for her first strike. Nick moved around the border of the circle slowly, back and forth, even as she advanced, and Judy couldn't help but admire the seeming casualness with which he did so. His knees were loosely bent, each movement graceful in its own way, and even as he maneuvered the tip of his sabre remained pointing unerringly in her direction. Judy had no choice but to rotate with him to prevent him from getting behind her, but he didn't take so much as a step toward her. There didn't seem to be any tension within his body whatsoever, and no matter how she tried to find one she couldn't see any tell that gave a clue as to when he would switch directions. The light of the alchemical torch was bright enough to completely banish the shadows within the ring, but his eyes didn't so much as twitch, let alone shift, to indicate the direction he would go in; he kept his mildly quizzical gaze focused entirely on her. Each step was unerringly within the boundaries of the circle despite the fact that he wasn't looking down at the line.

When Judy had closed the distance enough that any further movement forward on her part would put him within range of her spear while keeping her safely out of the range of his sword, he made no motion to get closer and Judy prepared her gambit. She started backing away, bringing her spear's tip up until the shaft of the spear was resting on her shoulder, one paw gripping it near the butt and the other about halfway up. She kept a careful eye on Nick as she did so, but he simply continued circling the outer edge of the dueling ring—until, that was, she had advanced into striking distance again.

As she brought the tip down, which whistled through the air, he lunged forward with shocking speed, his rear foot crossing over his front as he all but flew at her. With instinct borne of long practice, rather than stopping her strike she let it continue even as the tip of the spear uselessly hit the ground, and then swept sharply to the side. A plume of gritty dirt came up, but more importantly was the ringing metallic sound of Nick's blade catching against the shaft of her spear. The impact sent shocks up Judy's arms; Nick was stronger even than she had guessed, and his reaction to having his attack blocked was nearly instant as he continued past her. He let the blade of his sword run up the shaft of her spear, towards her numb fingers near the spear's butt even as she lifted the spear and tried to disengage.

The moment before the sword's dull edge would have painfully run into her fingers, Judy let go with that paw and spun around on the ball of one foot, her other paw still gripping the spear closer to its head. Nick squirmed to the side an instant too late and caught the blunt spear tip in the middle of his back, sprawling into the dirt as he let go of his sabre. It took the fox a minute to get up, his paws unsteady beneath him as he scrabbled at the dirt, which Judy could sympathize with; it was painful to get hit in the back. "Another good one," Nick acknowledged once he was finally upright again.

His once-magnificent green coat was completely covered with dirt, which also stained the creamy white patch of fur that ran along the underside of his muzzle, but even with his fur dulled by the ubiquitous grit of the Outer Baronies his eyes sparkled just as playfully as ever. "I told you I wasn't much of a fighter," he said, running his right paw carelessly along his left sleeve, "Look, my coat tore."

The embroidered cloth had indeed torn near the elbow, revealing that the dark brown fur of his paws and wrists didn't continue quite that far up his arms; the exposed fur was just as red-orange as most of his head. "I'll have to submit a bill to the City Guard, you know," he said, clucking his tongue even as he shook his head sadly, "Not that they'll respond."

He shrugged expansively as he took up his position at the border of the arena again. "But I suppose this has been fun, hasn't it, Carrots? It's easily worth one coat."

"Ready?" Judy asked, unsure of why he was suddenly so talkative, but Nick shook his head.

"Now, now, just a minute," he said, "You know what would be _more_ fun?"

Judy narrowed her eyes at him, but he chuckled. "So suspicious!" he said, "Even when you nearly have me beat."

Judy could feel her ears perking up, feeling somewhere in her gut that he was angling toward something even without knowing what it was. "Let's make this more interesting," Nick continued smoothly, "If you win, I'll give you this finely made sabre as a token of a battle well fought. Excellently crafted, you know."

He waved the sabre, which glittered in the light of the torch, to emphasize his point. "And if _you_ win?" Judy asked, cutting him off before he had the chance to go on.

"Oh, nothing much," Nick said, "Just one little favor."

"What kind of favor?" Judy asked with mounting suspicion; she was sure that there had to be some kind of trick.

"Nothing illegal, of course," Nick said, seeming unperturbed, "All I ask—and it is a small thing, really—is that you pass my name along to anyone you meet who needs an alchemist."

His words came out as smooth as butter and Judy couldn't help but stare at him. She had half-expected him to ask her to help smuggle things past the gate on their way back to the Middle Baronies or abuse her authority to lean on someone who owed him money (or someone he owed money to) or even to steal something from the City Guard's central library, which was said to contain all sorts of interesting and ancient tomes. "That's it?" Judy asked.

"That's it," Nick confirmed cheerfully, nodding his head.

"But— But I'd do that anyway!" she protested, which was the truth; despite his tendency to tease he was the only alchemist she knew and did seem rather talented.

Nick laughed. "My, we'll have to work on your negotiating a bit," he said, "But I suppose if that's too little, there's another tiny favor you could do for me. Once we get to Phoenix, there's a bookstore I'd like you to visit. The owner won't sell anything to a fox alchemist, you see, but a bunny..."

Nick shrugged. "Well, it's worth a shot," he said with remarkable good humor, "So what do you say? Do we have a deal?"

"I'd do that even if I lose," Judy said.

"Having low expectations pays off again," Nick said cheerfully, "Now—"

"But I've got one condition," Judy interrupted.

"I'm listening," Nick replied.

"I wanted to spar with you to fight an alchemist," Judy said, "And it's not that you're not good with a sword, but..."

"Not quite what you wanted?" Nick asked with an innocent tone.

"No," Judy said, "So I want you to fight with alchemy. If you do win, I'll give you any favor you want."

"As long as it's legal," she hastily added, and Nick nodded.

"As long as it's legal," he said agreeably, and perhaps she imagined it but Judy thought she saw something of a hungry gleam in his eyes, "On three again?"

When they began again, Judy hadn't been quite sure what to expect of Nick's alchemy, so she had lunged forward as quickly as she possibly could. She felt as though she had a decent sense of how quickly the fox could move, and since the greatest advantage his alchemy could give him was unpredictability she didn't want to give him the chance to react. She lunged forward so quickly that it didn't even occur to her until it was too late that when their countdown had reached one Nick had closed his eyes and had not reopened them. When she was almost to the alchemical torch that marked the center of the arena Nick swept one foot through the grit, making a semicircle, and as he did so the torch seemed to explode with pure white light.

Judy had seen powerful alchemical torches, such as the ones that lit up the Royal Palace, but only from a distance and never one so bright as to seem to temporarily turn night back into day. Although her eyes had snapped shut nearly the instant the torch had brightened it had still been too late. Dizzying colors bloomed behind her eyelids, throbbing with an impossible and unnatural brightness, and when she opened her eyes she couldn't see anything. She could still hear Nick's approach, though, and despite the disorientation of being suddenly blind she swung her spear outwards and was rewarded with a sound that could have only been Nick jumping backwards to avoid getting caught by it. Judy blinked rapidly, willing her eyes to work again, even as one of her ears twitched in response to a sudden sound and she threw herself to the side, feeling Nick's presence move past her.

Judy focused everything she could on listening for Nick, trying to divine his movements out of the rustle of cloth and whisper of the pads of his feet against the dirt. She wished she had a bat quauhxicalli; being able to actually _see_ using sound would have been an incredible advantage in the moment, but she had unfortunately decided not to take her quauhxicallis with her into the sparring match. The City Guard demanded usage reports for every single quauhxicalli (in response, she suspected, to guards selling them for tidy personal profits), and Judy thought she'd probably be up for disciplinary charges if she told the truth. Besides, there was still no telling what they might still encounter on the road; it wouldn't do to waste a quauhxicalli she might have a genuine need for later.

Judy tried to banish her scattered thoughts as she rolled to the side again, barely keeping a grip on her spear as she barely dodged another swing from Nick. The spots in her eyes were fading, though, and she desperately pushed her ears to their very limits, trying to hold on just a little bit longer until she could see again. Something, however, was very wrong; although the spots were fading Judy still couldn't see anything. After a brief stab of irrational fear that Nick had permanently blinded her—which nearly resulted in Nick catching her with his sword—Judy realized what it really meant. She couldn't see anything because Nick had, after making the alchemical torch glow impossibly bright, simply made it stop glowing. There was no moon in the sky and the stars weren't nearly bright enough for her eyes but they were for Nick's superior night vision—which became immediately apparent when Nick suddenly called, "My point!"

"But you didn't even touch—" Judy began, but she stopped when the alchemical torch suddenly flared back to life at its usual brightness.

In its silvery white glow, Judy saw that she was beyond the edge of the circle; Nick had tricked her into dodging out of it. It had been, she had to grudgingly admit, clever in its simplicity; all alchemical torches had a simple dial built into them to control the light they gave off and he had somehow simply managed to turn it off remotely after first making it much brighter than usual. "Are your eyes alright?" Nick asked, "Those torches can get awfully bright."

Judy had no idea whether or not he meant the question sincerely or if he was mocking her, so she simply said, "I'm fine."

"Why don't we say turning the torch up is off-limits now, hmmm?" Nick said, "There's so much more that alchemy can do."

Judy simply nodded, vowing to pay more careful attention to what Nick was doing before they started. She told herself that she should have noticed that he had closed his eyes and figured that he would do something with the light. Frustratingly, she felt as though she had almost managed to touch him with her spear, despite being blind, and perhaps if she hadn't had the initial moment of disorientation she could have still won the point and their bout. Judy shook her head as she banished the thought and tried to focus on the next round.

True to his word, Nick did not again immediately make the torch glow impossibly white, his eyes remaining open as Judy tried to figure out what his next move would be. When she had struck him with her spear, she had been able to tell that he wasn't wearing armor underneath his coat, and when he had fallen to the ground there hadn't been anything she could hear jangling or rattling. Perhaps it meant that he didn't have any little vials on him, or perhaps he had sturdier ones than glass, but she wasn't ruling anything out.

If Nick had any kind of concern about what she would do, he didn't show it. In fact, he didn't even move as Judy approached slowly, trying to spot any movement that might signal an attempt at alchemy. She was sure that the semicircle he had drawn in the grit with his foot had been how he had manipulated the torch (the obvious alternative, that he could perform alchemy simply by thinking about it, was rather frightening), but he wasn't moving at all. Suddenly, though, he raised and then stamped one foot and Judy involuntarily squinted her eyes, not sure she could trust his promise not to make the torch too bright for her eyes to handle.

She charged at him, trying to move too fast for him to react, and as a result was nearly swallowed up by the earth. She had no other way of explaining it; there had been a brief rumble before her foot started sinking through the ground as though it was made of mud before the ground simply opened up before her, revealing a triangular hole about six feet deep and six feet wide with walls of impossibly smooth glass that glittered in the light of the alchemical torch. Judy barely checked her momentum in time, pushing her spear hard against the ground to avoid plunging into the pit, but she had no respite. Nick stamped his foot again and another pit simply appeared beneath her spear with just as little warning, the butt of the spear briefly sinking into the seemingly solid ground before it gave way. Judy pulled her spear up and rolled clumsily to the other side, narrowly avoiding yet another pit that had appeared.

How Nick had managed to create the pits so quickly was a puzzle that Judy simply couldn't figure out; she had seen that he needed time to perform the magic. Time, and a drawn-out pattern with—Judy gasped as the solution came to her. "You weren't blunting your sword, were you?" Judy asked as she jumped away from another pit.

Nick chuckled. "Very clever," he said, nodding approvingly, "No I was not."

He shrugged even as he stamped his foot again, opening up another pit. Nick was now standing on a narrow peninsula of ground that extended from the border of the arena, surrounded by a chasm six feet across. Each time he stamped his foot, another segment of the arena dropped away, slowly reducing how much space Judy had left; before too long there simply wouldn't be any way for her to reach him. "I was setting this little surprise up for you," he said.

"Good reflexes, by the way," Nick added as Judy avoided another pit opening up.

In retrospect, what Nick had done was obvious. While he had pretended to be using his alchemy to blunt his sword—which, Judy assumed, had not been sharp at the time he had unwrapped it—he had actually been turning the arena into a giant trap with his alchemy, which also explained why it had seemed to take so long. The design of the trap, a series of triangular pits, seemed to mirror the pattern of interlocking triangles on the piece of linen his sword had been wrapped in, leaving narrow little pieces of ground in between the deep pits. The way the tops of the pits worked, it seemed, was by converting the solid rock into sand, something that Nick seemed to be able to do nearly instantly when he stamped the ground. He had, she realized, turned the entire arena they were fighting in into a magic circle, and he was quite clearly capable of transmuting objects much faster than she had thought.

She had barely noticed it before, but every time a pit had opened the top had simply stopped reflecting light, becoming perfectly black, and then brightening again so fast that it had initially seemed like a trick of the light. Judy looked across the arena at where Nick was standing, and while she tried thinking of some way to get to him she stalled for time. "How do you do alchemy without the—" she began, but Nick cut her off with one wave of the paw.

"The candle and the water and all that?" he interrupted, "I've got the earth and the wind for my focus. Not having fire or water is a bit limiting for me—not that it'll help you—but turning stone into sand isn't really changing much."

He shrugged carelessly, and Judy understood; he was gradually reducing how much room she had to maneuver, and once she was in a pit it was all over. That wasn't the same thing as saying that he was winning, though, and Judy had the beginning of an idea. "You didn't show me you could transmute this quickly," she said, trying to gauge how well she could use what was left of the arena.

Some of the borders between the pits were walls only an inch or so thick, made of smooth glass topped with a gritty layer of dirt. Judy thought she could keep her balance and she knew she could either throw her spear or jump the six feet between Nick's little peninsula and the nearest wall, but once she committed to either one she'd have no second chance; it would be all or nothing. "Most mammals find alchemy more impressive if it looks like it takes a lot of effort and they get to see all the color changes," Nick replied, smiling crookedly, "That's just being a good merchant."

"You didn't have to lie," Judy said, even as she tried positioning herself.

It would have to be a quick sprint along the top of a narrow wall that made a number of geometrically precise turns followed by a flying leap, and all she needed was an opportunity. "It would have still been impressive," she continued; Nick had succeeded in goading her, and it seemed natural to try returning the favor.

"I never lied," Nick replied, "I might have exaggerated a little—"

"A little?" Judy retorted.

"Or possibly a lot," Nick acknowledged smoothly, "But it really is hard to get good results when you hurry alchemy along. You see how ragged the—"

As Nick spoke, he turned to gesture down at the edge of the nearest pit to him, and Judy seized the opportunity. She ran along the tiny balance beam that was the wall and made a flying leap, her spear point thrust forward before her. The expression on Nick's face—an almost comical O of surprise—lasted just long enough that Judy felt sure she was going to make it. Nick, however, rolled out of the way and into the nearest pit and Judy realized the flaw in her plan too late. She had only considered whether or not Nick would be able to get in a blow before she could; she had figured that the only options would be that either she would get him or he would get her. Without Nick there to collide into, however, there was nothing stopping her from painfully hitting the ground and once more sliding out of the arena.

Judy tried digging in her nails and her spear as she slid but it did nothing but make her dirty, and she stopped about three inches outside the ring. "Your point," Judy said.

After a series of rather colorful curses that echoed slightly in the pit Nick was trapped in, he managed to pull himself up on the lip of the pit he was in, and once he was out he blinked at her. "Yes it is," he said, but he didn't sound mocking.

Rather, he seemed genuinely surprised that she wasn't taking the opportunity to cheat; it would have been rather easy to stand up, turn around, and use her spear to poke down at him in the pit where he likely would have been at her mercy. "Well," Nick said after a long moment, "I better fix this up before our next round."

He gestured vaguely at the pockmarked arena, which outside the heat of battle was a remarkable microcosm of the Outer Baronies. The glass-lined pits Nick had created as traps were strikingly similar to the craters that dotted the wastelands, full of milky and broken glass, and Judy supposed that if he didn't fix the pits they might eventually resemble them even more closely albeit at a smaller scale. Time might make the grass crack and fall apart, and the grit carried by the wind might turn the glass translucent, and some future traveler might not even be able to tell the difference. Only the two of them would know; it would be one of those pointless little secrets they would take to their graves. "Assuming you want to go another round, of course," Nick added, and his voice was full of its old teasing quality again, "There's no shame in quitting."

"Yes there is," Judy replied, although she couldn't help but smile.

"That's the spirit," Nick said, and Judy noticed that he was panting.

Perhaps he had exaggerated how much time and effort alchemy really took from him, but it obviously wasn't completely effortless. Creating the trap, and then activating it, had clearly taken its toll, and Judy wondered how many tricks he had left. Even if he did manage to win, though, Judy was sure she wouldn't have to worry about earning Nick's respect; she was pretty sure she already had it. "Come on," Judy said, trying to hide a smile, "Stop stalling."

Nick chuckled and set his palms against the edge of the arena. "It _is_ easier with my paws, by the way," he said, and Judy nodded seriously.

"I'll make sure I take advantage of that," she said, and Nick laughed.

Something between them had changed over the course of the four rounds they had fought; somehow Nick felt more like a friend than he did like a responsibility or a traveling companion. As Nick repaired the arena, teasing her for being a taskmaster, Judy couldn't help but feel that Nick felt the same.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Although it was tempting to put in a nod to "The Princess Bride" by having Nick switch from wielding his sword with his left paw to his right, I chose to keep Nick in this story left-pawed. In real-world fencing, being left-handed is actually a decent advantage at the lower levels of the sport. There's no intrinsic advantage to using one hand over the other, but since only about 10% of the population is left-handed it means that left-handed fencers have much more experience fighting right-handed fencers than right-handed fencers have fighting left-handed fencers. I've seen amateur left-handed fencers clean up at épée tournaments even when there were technically superior right-handed fencers; it can be difficult for right-handed fencers to adjust their form against left-handed fencers. Conversely, one of the more amusing épée bouts I've seen was between two left-handed fencers who both had no idea how to handle fighting someone who used the same form that they did since they had never gone up against another left-handed fencer until they faced each other.

Judy's fencing instructor from her academy days is named after a left-handed fencer who I consider myself very fortunate to have known; he was a wonderful teacher and despite his age still an excellent fencer. He was also fond of striking the forearm or elbow of any right-handed fencer who went up against him and forgot to adjust their technique for fighting a lefty.

I did my best to make the work with spear and sword accurate to how the weapons were historically used. After her first point, on her second advance, Judy brings her spear into the high guard position, which is particularly useful for rapidly dropping the point to make a fast strike with a great deal of power behind it. Nick's response is a flèche, a technique in fencing in which the rear leg crosses over the front, which requires a little explanation. In the major Western fencing styles—sabre, foil, and épée—the fencer's positioning is generally as Nick's is described. The fencer holds themselves with one foot (on the same side of the body as their weapon hand) leading and the other trailing, the torso turned to face forward along the leading leg. Standing like this allows the weight of the fencer to be held over the trailing leg, providing excellent stability, and advances or retreats are made with careful footwork to avoid the distance between the legs from growing too large, which threatens the balance. In a normal attack, the trailing leg provides striking power, but in a flèche attack the fencer uses their front leg to propel themselves forward after the initial impulse, crossing over their legs as they advance by switching their trailing leg to their leading leg.

Notably, the flèche technique is banned in sabre fencing (which prohibits the fencers from crossing their legs over; all advances and retreats must be done with the leading and trailing feet remaining as leading or trailing) and is only allowed in foil and épée. However, all three modern fencing styles are distinctly sports nowadays more so than valid fighting methods, and while Nick's strike would be cheating in sport fencing in a real battle there weren't exactly strictly followed rules.

Judy's response is to continue her strike from high guard to go into Olber, a spear positioning with the tip downward, and sweeping.

Once alchemy becomes involved, all bets are off, but I did follow the rules I established; I think it's pretty in-character for Nick to have deliberately put on a show earlier in this story at the same time he hides his true ability.

As always, thanks for reading! I'm sorry if you find the cliffhanger disappointing, but I thought the pacing worked best splitting the conclusion out. I would love to hear what you thought.


	10. Chapter 10

"Captain General?" Cerdo's voice floated into Bogo's awareness with the distinct air of a mammal who had already tried and failed to get his attention.

Bogo blinked as he pulled his attention away from the files spread across his desk. In the end, Alfonso had given him the names of four blood magicians he thought to have the skills—and the lack of scruples—that would be necessary to manufacture a quauhxicalli from the very life of a cheetah. As to how promising those leads were, Bogo would have to wait to hear back from his officers; one of the sad truths of being the captain general was that he simply didn't have many opportunities to go into the field anymore. Even visiting Alfonso in prison had likely raised a few eyebrows as some would doubtlessly take it as an insult that he hadn't delegated the task. Certainly there would be nobles whispering that it was a sign that he didn't trust his top generals, and as little as Bogo cared what the useless and pampered members of the upper class thought he couldn't afford to alienate his actual officers.

It was why, not even an hour after visiting Alfonso, he was back in his office in the Royal Palace, reviewing files as others were actually doing the work of investigating the blood magicians and the would-be assassin. Bogo repressed a sigh as he swept the files together and looked across his desk at Cerdo, who was standing there with a somewhat anxious look upon his face. Part of that might have been Bogo's office, which had been deliberately set up to be intimidating by the first mammal to hold the office in a tradition too powerful for Bogo to break no matter how much he detested it. The desk was positively enormous, so large that even Bogo had to use an elevated chair—which seemed to him uncomfortably close to a throne—to see over it, and with his own natural size taken into account it meant he absolutely towered over most mammals who approached the desk even while sitting. The desk had been carved out of a single block of black volcanic stone, the top of it polished to glassy smoothness while the sides were covered with elaborate engravings depicting the founding principles of the kingdom's laws in the pictograms of the Old Tongue.

Behind him was a window with what Bogo knew to be an incredible view of the palace's grounds, as was to be expected considering that his office was about halfway up the oldest central tower. Sometime long ago it might have been possible, on a clear day, to see all the way to the Inner Wall, but the rise of buildings over the centuries in the Inner Baronies meant that his view ended shortly after the palace grounds ended. Something Bogo's predecessor had told him, immediately before vacating the office, was to remember that his view of the city told him almost nothing of how well or poorly it was running. It was an observation that Bogo had found to be completely true; even with the attempt on the princess's life mere hours in the past the ebb and flow of mammals below, tiny as ants, didn't seem to have changed any. None of the great towers were smoldering ruins, none of the distant banners of merchants hawking their wares from countless stalls and carts lining the streets had lost their luster; in short there was no sign to show that the city had narrowly avoided what would have been one of the greatest catastrophes to ever befall it.

It was a philosophical bent that Bogo's thoughts seemed to keep being inordinately drawn to, a sort of rumination on the seeming indifference of the city and his own powerlessness to actually change anything, and with greater effort than it had taken to sweep the surface of his desk into order he pushed the thoughts aside and answered the waiting pig. "Yes, Lord Cerdo?" Bogo asked, doing what he thought was a decent enough job in giving his words a pleasant tone, "How may I help you?"

Cerdo grimaced, the shuffling of his hooves on the polished marble floor making delicate little clicks, and Bogo was surprised to find that the pig actually seemed embarrassed. "I... Well, I wanted to apologize, first, Captain General," he said, and Bogo thought he saw a faint red flush coloring the pig's already rosy pink cheeks and ears through his nearly non-existent covering of fur, "Our princess was nearly assassinated, and the last thing I said before it happened..."

He trailed off, but Bogo didn't need him to continue. Cerdo had been smugly asking why Bogo was worried about a falling crime rate, seemingly totally convinced that there was absolutely no cause for concern. Whether the embarrassment Cerdo felt was because he had been so clearly wrong, or simply the result of his political rivals in the form of Corazón and Cencerro almost certainly coming out ahead of him in the queen's eyes, Bogo wasn't going to question it. Bogo's distaste for political games didn't blind him to the realities of life in the royal court; grudges had no place in the City Guard, where impartiality was of paramount importance to its very stability. If he went after every single noble who irritated him, as some captain generals had in the past, he would end up just like them—the head of an army with a completely insufficient budget, staffed by totally inadequate officers, and at the mercy of the private guards that the wealthiest of nobles maintained for their own protection. Bogo pushed down his very real and very petty desire to make Cerdo squirm and simply said, "Your presence here shows you've rethought those words."

Cerdo looked up at Bogo, his eyes brightening at the life line he had just been provided, and eagerly nodded. "Precisely, precisely!" he said, his heavy jowls wobbling at how emphatically he spoke, "I wished to volunteer my own resources to assist your investigation—and the City Guard—in any way I can. I have nearly two hundred guards of my own, all of them highly trained and some even veterans of your noble institution, that I beg you to allow me to place at your disposal."

Bogo sat back in his chair, the old wood of which groaned in complaint as he shifted position; the chair was one of the things he would have loved to have changed about his office, if only he could. Traditions were, however, sometimes too strong to overcome, which made Cerdo's offer all the more surprising. It was very nearly an immutable fact, such as how the sun would rise in the East or how an alchemist would be self-important, that nobles would not volunteer their own personal guards for service to the city. There were always excuses, of course; four years ago when there had been a rash of bandits striking travelers in the Middle Baronies, all the nobles had put on performances that would have done an acting troupe proud. They would have been happy to spare soldiers, but they had to protect their own caravans of supplies, or the guards were already engaged in construction projects, or they couldn't afford the expense. The only excuse Bogo had actually believed had been the one that came from the head of the Tochtli Barony, who claimed not to have a private guard; it was typical of rabbits to expect others to protect them. Cerdo's excuse, as Bogo recalled, had been that his soldiers didn't have the training to stop bandits unless they were issued the same sort of torcs as the official City Guard. Otherwise, Cerdo had claimed, his soldiers would simply die themselves for each bandit that was struck down.

As the queen was not so foolish as to overlook the obvious problem with allowing the various lords and ladies that made up the nobility to have private armies at their disposal that could strike with impunity, Bogo had devised an alternate solution by forcing the nobles to contribute either money or conscripts. It was not a decision that had made him popular; no matter how much Bogo himself pointedly did not show grudges he was sure it was the source of many against him personally, and Cerdo had been one of the mammals most vocally in favor of the City Guard being reduced in size once the bandit threat was no longer quite as urgent. Corazón, by contrast, had deftly outmaneuvered Bogo's desire for worthy members of the City Guard by pushing for his ludicrous scheme to allow mammals from species that had not previously been called on to serve, allowing the lion to keep the most useful members of his own personal guard and sending pitiful soldiers as conscripts in their place.

For Cerdo to volunteer his entire personal guard, Bogo could only guess that the pig was attempting a particularly bold move in the hopes of getting in the queen's good graces again, as she was unlikely to forget that he had pushed against the very sort of expansion of the City Guard that might have prevented the attempt on the princess's life. It was certainly unprecedented in Bogo's experience, but he wasn't about to give Cerdo a chance to change his mind. Perhaps he'd even be lucky and other nobles would fall over themselves trying to copy Cerdo's example; there was no telling what Bogo could accomplish with another thousand or so guard mammals. "I appreciate your offer," Bogo said, "And I accept. Have your guards sent to the central garrison at once."

Bogo pulled a blank piece of paper towards himself, but before he could pick up his fine silver fountain pen Cerdo pulled a piece of parchment from an interior pocket and slid it across the glossy surface of Bogo's desk. "I've already prepared what I believe to be a suitable order," Cerdo said, and Bogo quickly scanned the text.

No matter what else he could say about Cerdo, the pig's writing was beautiful and perfectly legible, and the order ran only a few simple lines. Cerdo was transferring the contracts for two hundred soldiers to the city as well as a sum of money so enormous that it would be sufficient to pay for their wages for at least five years. Cerdo had already signed it with an elaborate flourish, and Bogo added his own far simpler signature to the page. Bogo pulled the bell cord that hung near his desk for alerting a guard that they were needed in his office and then turned back to Cerdo. "Was there anything else, Lord Cerdo?" he asked.

"Only to ask if there is anything else—absolutely anything at all—that I may help with to find the mammal responsible," Cerdo said, and his words were rather solemn.

After Bogo had dismissed the lord in the awkward dance of politeness that always seemed to happen when Cerdo was involved and a guard had arrived to take the freshly signed order to the central garrison, he turned his attention back to the files that had been pulled at his request. Unlike alchemists, who were virtually entirely under the rigid control of a single powerful guild, blood magicians were more loosely aligned with at least half a dozen guilds. The guilds of blood magicians were, however, somewhat more cooperative with the City Guard than the Alchemist Guild tended to be, and they kept meticulous records on all of their members. For each of the four mammals Alfonso had named, Bogo had detailed summaries of their education, specialties, shops, and even their earnings, supplemented by the information the City Guard maintained.

Unfortunately, each of the four mammals struck Bogo as being about equal in terms of their potential for having been the creator of the quauhxicalli that had been used by the llama in his attack. There was a tiger who maintained a shop in Phoenix who specialized in quauhxicallis made from feline donors, but there was absolutely nothing either in the file her guild maintained on her or in the City Guard's own records to even suggest at a motive. In contrast, another of Alfonso's leads was a bear who had been questioned by the City Guard several times concerning anti-monarchist views, but she had never been formally arrested and her guild's documentation showed her specialty was quauhxicallis made from birds. The third mammal was a weasel who had served a jail sentence and nearly been dropped from his guild after being accused of selling counterfeit quauhxicallis that didn't quite have the advertised effects, but even if he had the moral flexibility to craft a quauhxicalli that required the sacrifice of a life he didn't officially have the required skill per his guild's assessment. The last lead Alfonso had provided was for a wolf who had served a brief prison sentence and been blacklisted from all of the major blood magic guilds following a disastrous attempt at healing a patient who would likely have been better served by an alchemist, after which he had moved to Phoenix.

As the weasel lived in the Inner Baronies and the bear in the Middle Baronies, Bogo anticipated that his officers would quickly have updates for him to add more information to the rather thin files that he had. The tiger and the wolf were the two leads it would take the longest to follow up on; although Bogo had dispatched a messenger hawk as quickly as he could to Phoenix with orders for the garrison there to investigate the suspects, it would take days for a response to come no matter what the cocky mouse rider had promised. Considering how much the diminutive messenger had charged, citing the dangers of flying his bird all the way to Phoenix, Bogo had found himself in the rare situation of actually agreeing with Corazón about something; the City Guard needed its own messenger birds.

Bogo frowned as the thought crossed his mind, absently tapping at the surface of his desk with his pen. He trusted Alfonso's information only so much as he believed that the shrew didn't have any personal involvement in the attempted murder of the princess and that the shrew hadn't deliberately withheld anything from him. Considering that the four mammals Alfonso had named didn't seem to have any obvious connection to one of Alfonso's rivals it suggested that the shrew still knew quite a bit that the City Guard either didn't or that well-placed bribes were keeping from reaching official files. However, Alfonso had moved in rather different circles than the ones that Bogo moved in, and he had never rubbed elbows with the most highly placed of nobles.

It was entirely possible that Alfonso's leads would prove totally fruitless, particularly if a noble was the mastermind, and somehow Corazón simply felt suspicious in a way Bogo couldn't put a finger on. For as long as Bogo had known the lion, Corazón seemed to have climbed from one political victory to the next, always a step ahead of his rivals and always being proved right. Although Corazón had had the good graces not to brag about it when they had spoken in the Hall of Ancestors, Bogo's conversation with Cerdo had made it clear that the lion had scored yet another win. The case for expanding the City Guard had been made quite clear with the failed assassination, and Bogo suspected that it would elevate Corazón even higher in the queen's eye. High enough, perhaps, to finally arrange a marriage between Corazón's son and the princess—or maybe even between the queen and Corazón himself.

Bogo rolled the end of his pen across his desk with increasing speed as he considered another new angle. Perhaps the assassination had never been intended to succeed; perhaps the mastermind had always intended for the llama to fail even if the llama hadn't been aware of that. If Bogo had been ever so slightly slower in responding, would Corazón have been the hero of the hour? It was possible; although the lion was no blood magician himself, he was fond of wearing expensive quauhxicallis at his belt in a silent yet ostentatious display of wealth, and the llama would have been forced to pass him on his way to the princess. Bogo pulled the piece of paper he had intended to use for drafting his orders for Cerdo's guards and carefully wrote a note: "Investigate Corazón's connections to blood magicians."

Somehow, the act of writing the words down brought with them the same simple pleasure Bogo remembered from his days walking the beat of Zootopia. There was nothing quite like that feeling of solving a problem, and while he certainly didn't have any evidence of Corazón's guilt it was well worth looking into. After Bogo had sealed the message, addressed it to a trusted general, and dispatched it with another member of the City Guard, he sat quietly considering his other leads. Although the llama's torc had been somewhat mangled by the force with which it hit the ground, it had still been possible to read the mammal's name off of it. Jorge de Cuvier was, so far as the city's official records could tell, an absolute nobody. He was thirty-two years old, had dutifully paid his taxes every year since coming of age, and had never had any kind of run-in with the City Guard. His tax records showed him to work as an unskilled stonemason, where he had earned enough to live a modest life in a small apartment. Jorge de Cuvier had never married or had any children, and from official records seemed to be the sort of mammal who made up the bedrock of Zootopia. Bogo looked forward to hearing what his officers interviewing Cuvier's neighbors and boss would say about him; there had been no mistaking the look of anger and hate twisting the llama's face as he charged at the princess and it seemed impossible that he had managed to completely hide his feelings from the mammals who knew him best.

Bogo was still waiting to hear back from the court's blood magician as to whether any additional information could be divined from the llama's remains, which seemed to be the running refrain. All he could do was wait, and he hated it. Bogo heaved a sigh no one else was around to hear, pushing himself upright from his overly ostentatious chair, and turned to look out his window. The palace grounds were a riot of color, carefully chosen plants tended to by the best gardeners in the entire city-state forming artful patterns too far below to make out individual leaves or flowers. The additional guards Bogo had ordered posted, even with their red tunics and gleaming breastplates, weren't visible from where he observed, and Bogo thought again of the illusion of stability. It was not a thought that the queen was likely to appreciate, and Bogo resolved not to mention it to her.

It had been several hours since he had last seen her or the princess, however, and lacking any action he could take personally to find the mastermind Bogo decided to visit them. The princess especially deserved a sign that what had almost happened was a fluke; she was still, in Bogo's mind, too young to fully realize the truth of how fragile her world really was and needed the reassurance. Or maybe he was giving her less credit than she deserved. Certainly Bogo's own daughter had frequently surprised him with how much she understood when she had been a calf, and she hadn't been the future heir to all of Zootopia. Bogo felt a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he remembered the time when his daughter was twelve and—"Captain General?" a voice called, interrupting his thoughts.

The smile had vanished from Bogo's face by the time he turned around and faced one of the mammals he wanted to see least. There, framed in the enormous doorway to his office such that she appeared even smaller than usual, was the Lady Alba Cencerro. "I was wondering," the ewe said, holding up one hoof with her fingers less than an inch apart, "If I could have just a little moment of your time?"

Bogo settled himself into his own chair, ignoring its creaks, and gestured at the chair on the other side of his desk. "By all means," he said, resigning himself to yet another political matter.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

A reader using the handle Deathsmallcaps said that they drew art of Princess Isabel based on this story. This is hugely flattering for me, and I'm amazed that Deathsmallcaps went to such efforts based on something I wrote; from the description alone I can tell they put a lot of thought into how to draw her. Unfortunately, the site's anti-spam policy ate the link to the image that was provided, leaving only the following text:

gallery/1fWj6PG

Even worse, Deathsmallcaps wasn't a logged-in user, so I can't even PM them. If Deathsmallcaps or someone else can provide me with the full link, I'd be incredibly grateful and I'll definitely link to it!

As previously mentioned, the Tochtli Barony is where this version of Judy comes from and is located in the Middle Baronies; I think it's pretty in character for her parents not to have a massive personal guard the way richer nobles do.

Aztec writing is an interesting topic, particularly because there's still debate as to whether it was a complete form of writing or not. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Aztec writing from before the time of Spanish colonization was destroyed, most of it by Spanish clergy members, and very little remains for study. What is known, however, is that the language used pictograms and ideograms (that is, pictures that visually depict the concept that they stand for) and did not have an alphabet the way English or most Western languages do. However, in a manner similar to some Asian languages, some words were represented by glyphs for other words that are pronounced the same way; for example the way to represent the name of the city Tenochtitlan was through the symbol for stone (te-tl) and the symbol for cactus (nochtli). Surviving works written in the Aztec system used for the spoken language frequently seem to be mnemonics for lists of information rather than the transcribed forms of sentences or paragraphs.

All that can be said for sure is that Aztecs did at the very least have a proto-writing system that could encode information in a pictorial fashion, and a growing body of research shows that they had a fairly sophisticated system for doing so, even to the point of having visual representations of spoken puns and wordplay. That's a lot of words to say that it would indeed be possible to carve, using the Aztec system, a representation of the legal system into the sides of a desk.

Fountain pens were first made sometime around the 10th century, but a number of difficulties prevented them from becoming practical until about the middle of the 19th century. Most notably there were difficulties with creating a suitable ink that wouldn't clog up the pen or cause it to corrode. I imagine that in the universe of this story, however, the greater control over matter that alchemy allows would make the mass adoption of fountain pens easier than it was in our world.

This chapter indicates that there are messenger hawks in this setting that have small mammals riding them. I figured that it made sense considering the complete lack of anything analogous to telephones or radios. The possibility of riding a bird seems to me like it'd be one of the greatest perks of being a small mammal in Zootopia, although it's probably safe to assume that comparatively few mammals would actually get to do so. Or might even want to, considering that, unlike a human riding a horse in the real world, a mouse riding a falcon might have to deal with his ride being both capable of and inclined towards eating him.

Out of the mammals that Alfonso named, the bear having a history of anti-monarch sentiment is a small joke on my part, referencing the common symbolic association of bears with Russia, a country that does indeed have something of a history of opposing monarchs. For the others, I won't say anything now, but there are probably some reasonable conclusions that can be drawn.

The llama's name being Jorge de Cuvier is a nod to Georges Cuvier, the French naturalist who first taxonomically categorized llamas separately from alpacas. His living in an apartment may seem kind of modern, but in fact apartments have a long history in Mesoamerica. The city of Teotihuacan, which was likely first established more than two thousand years ago, shows evidence that virtually the entire population of the city lived in apartments in a manner rather similar to most modern cities. I imagine that, particularly for the Inner Baronies where the buildings are the most densely packed, this is also the case, with only nobles and the extremely wealthy capable of affording large plots of land.

"Alba" means "sunrise" or "dawn" in Spanish and is commonly used as a female name, making it seem appropriate for this version of Bellwether. Bogo not being particularly happy to see her is, perhaps, a universal constant even in an AU work.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought!


	11. Chapter 11

While Nick was repairing the damage he had done to their arena, Judy considered how she could get one more strike in. There was no doubt in her mind that she was significantly more skilled with a weapon than Nick was, but she was just as sure that even if he kept his promise not to make pits or blinding flashes of light again, there had to be another alchemical trick up his sleeve. Figuratively _or_ literally, she supposed, watching Nick's paws closely as he worked; he was still wearing his now torn and dust-stained embroidered coat, which she remained highly suspicious of. Unfortunately, it wasn't as though he needed to have something hidden away in an interior pocket; he had demonstrated repeatedly his ability to use the very circle of their arena as a means of focusing his power, and there wasn't anything she could do about that...

Judy was hit by a sudden flash of inspiration as she realized she had been thinking about it all wrong. The entire way Nick fought was by being tricky and clever. Letting him fight like that was only begging to be outsmarted, to react to whatever he did too late to make a difference. But, she thought, and there was a slow smile spreading across her face that she hoped he hadn't noticed, all that meant was that she would have to be trickier.

A moment later, when Nick had finished restoring the arena to its original smoothness, any traces of a smile had vanished from Judy's face; she had set her jaw with deliberation, willing her gaze to be as fiercely tough as possible. Judging from what other mammals had said in the academy she suspected that it might not be a very intimidating look, particularly for larger mammals, but if Nick saw any signs of her intent he gave no indication of it himself. "Ready?" he called as he took his position, briefly dusting his paws together before leaning to grab his sabre.

"Ready," Judy called, and in the brief moment when his attention was distracted by picking up his weapon she made her move.

She was holding her spear upright in her right paw, the butt of it resting against the ground, and she maneuvered it a few inches back. Per the rules they had agreed to, neither one of them could leave the arena, but they had never set any limits on their weapons, which she was going to shamelessly take advantage of. The gritty dirt of the Outer Baronies smoothly parted at her spear's touch, and although she couldn't look back to confirm it she knew that she had broken the circle. Judy didn't expect to completely prevent Nick from using his alchemy; he had, after all, said that the circle was only a focusing tool, but if it took him even so much as an extra second or two to use his power it would be too late for him. "On three," Nick called, "One, two, three!"

The moment his count ended Judy lunged, the familiar heft of her spear providing a comforting weight as she let its tip guide her towards Nick. Nick himself wasn't waiting to react; the instant his count ended he dragged one foot through a half-circle and gestured upwards with his right paw as though he was trying to lift a heavy weight.

Nothing happened.

His eyes caught the light of the alchemical torch as they went wide, and raw triumph seemed to flow through Judy's veins, a feeling too intense and pure for thoughts or words. She had him helplessly outmaneuvered; her aim was perfectly aligned to slip past his guard and catch him full in the chest with her spear's blunt tip. The remaining steps between them shortened quicker than seemed possible and Judy let loose an inarticulate cry of victory. Nick was twisting away, but not fast enough; he dropped his sword in his haste to dodge, his paws tucking against his sides as he tried to make himself a smaller target.

Judy easily changed her angle of attack, the tip of her spear still heading towards his center of mass with an inevitable finality to it. Judy's focus on Nick had become so absolute that there was nothing else in the world. The gritty dust of the ground and the dark sky had fallen completely away until there was only Nick before her. In an instant that felt as though it lasted an eternity she saw him as though it was for the first time. Every strand of his fur, glowing orange in the pale silvery light of the alchemical torch, seemed to stand out in perfect relief. Judy saw the strength in his limbs, beneath his dusty coat and trousers, and the beautiful embroidery only emphasized his lean muscles as the tight fabric caught the light. It was Nick's eyes, though, that seemed the most transformed; his pupils were full of pinpoints of starlight and his vividly green irises gleamed. The surprise had gone out of his face so close to his loss; his angular features had resolved themselves into what looked like his typically smug expression. The thought that something wasn't quite right had just begun to make its way through Judy's mind before Nick winked and was gone.

Judy's spear slammed into something so hard and unyielding that her paws went instantly numb and she nearly dropped it as she rolled to the side. Where Nick had been was only a raised bulge in the ground, his abandoned sword resting at its base. If it weren't for the spot her spear had struck, which had scuffed away some of the gritty dirt and revealed what looked like iron, it would have looked simply like a bubble in the ground. "Very clever," Nick's voice came from the direction of the bubble; it was somewhat muffled but perfectly audible for her ears, "Breaking the arena's circle almost worked, too."

To Judy's ears he sounded particularly cheerful, but she thought there was a ragged edge to his voice, as though he was growing tired. She ignored the throbbing from her paws as she carefully stood upright, her spear pointing forward, and strained her eyes and her ears to their limits. Judy took a cautious step away from the bubble, and as she did so caught a better look at the structure hidden under the dirt; it looked almost like a flower bud that hadn't opened, except much larger and made out of metal. That did explain, at least, why it had hurt so badly to hit it, and Judy tried to force down the tremors in her paws from the shock of the blow, voicing a silent thanks to the gods she hadn't broken both of her wrists in the attempt. "You made that little dome ahead of time, didn't you?" Judy asked, carefully sidestepping as she tried to find an avenue of attack.

Without a quauhxicalli, Judy knew that she simply didn't have the strength to do anything about the little protective bubble Nick had made himself, and she had left all of hers behind in her tent before their bout started. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any weak spot in the dome; although it was somewhat difficult to tell beneath the layer of grit that covered it, there were no apparent holes and Judy doubted she could fit so much as a whisker in one of the seams. "I did, yes," Nick's voice came back, still from within the dome, and Judy thought her suspicion that Nick was wearing himself out was confirmed.

She could hear him—faintly, but distinctly—panting with exertion, but it also sounded like he was moving. "How'd you do it without the arena's circle?" Judy asked, "Willpower?"

She gave the last word a sarcastic tinge she thought he would appreciate, and was rewarded with a chuckle that sounded as though it wasn't quite coming from inside the dome anymore. Rather, he seemed to be creeping underground underneath her feet, and Judy forced herself still. There were three other bubbles in the ground like the one he had disappeared under, arranged in an off-centered square, and Judy thought there must be some connection between them. Whatever other skills Nick had, Judy knew that his hearing couldn't be as good as hers, and she wasn't going to make it easy for him. He didn't have his sabre anymore, which meant he was down to his alchemy alone. Which was still a tremendous advantage, but Judy pushed the thought aside. "We could go with that," Nick said agreeably, "It sounds suitably dramatic, don't you think?"

After a moment, when Judy hadn't responded, still straining with her ears to try to pin Nick down, he continued. "My coat's lining is embroidered on the inside. Call it a spare for em—"

His voice cut off suddenly as Judy plunged her spear into the ground, where it encountered brief resistance after the first six inches before sliding in so smoothly she nearly lost her grip. Judy knew instantly, though, that she had missed, but before she could pull her spear back she felt Nick grab it. She pulled hard with both paws, and he suddenly let go; she tumbled backwards, landing painfully, but she had her spear and Nick still had no weapon.

As Judy jumped to her feet, she realized that wasn't quite right; there was something dreadfully _wrong_ with her spear she had never even imagined possible. The spear's shaft was made out of a strong, lightweight metal, and although Judy had seen spears dent or even crack in training she had never seen a spear do what hers was doing. Near the center of the shaft, where Nick must have touched it, it had become incredibly shiny, but there were wispy fibers of metal coming off of it. More seriously, the shaft was starting to bend; as Judy looked at her spear the bottom half of the shaft simply fell off. It looked almost as though it had rusted, but the metal wasn't _supposed_ to rust, and even if it could she had never seen anything give way so quickly.

Judy banged the decaying end of the half she was still holding against the ground, feeling the metal weakly folding and peeling, but otherwise it seemed solid enough if obviously not nearly as long as it had been. She strained her ears again, and caught the sound of Nick's breathing, which was increasingly rapid. His little trick might have ruined her weapon, but it had clearly cost him a not-insignificant amount of effort; she'd just have to try stabbing through the ground again.

She could hear Nick moving slowly underground, heading toward one of the other bubbles he had made, and she froze. She had to be tricky, she reminded herself, not just try the same thing again and give him a second chance to destroy her spear. If she wanted to take him by surprise, she knew she'd have to fake him out. No matter how much every instinct protested that she needed to spin around and be ready to face him, she deliberately kept her back to the bubble, listening as hard as she could. She turned slowly, as though she was keeping an eye on the bubble he had disappeared into, and then it happened.

She heard a strange metallic squealing coming from behind her and forced herself still, nothing moving but her nose, until she was sure Nick had committed to his attack. She spun around and saw instantly that she had underestimated him as he charged out of what looked for all the world like a metal flower in full bloom. She had thought he might try hitting her with some kind of alchemical projectile, or even make a crude replacement sword, but he hadn't. Nick had, in fact, made himself a spear, and although it was nothing more than a long pole with a blunted end it was still longer than her spear had been even before he had somehow made it corrode into two pieces.

Her remaining piece of spear was pathetically short, barely long enough to block his charge, and in a moment of instinct Judy didn't. When she thought about it later, she would think that it was because there was something about the way that he carried his own spear that showed that he wasn't very experienced with the weapon, some subtlety of positioning or his angle of attack. Judy threw her remaining bit of spear aside and charged at him, effortlessly dodging a clumsy strike until she was too close for him to do anything, the end of his spear already past her. She brought her fist up, and while Nick tried twisting away all it did was bring his head lower; she caught him square in the eye.

The fight instantly went out of Nick as he fell flat on his back, and as he fell his tail entangled itself in Judy's legs and brought her down on top of him, the top of her head painfully striking against the bottom of his jaw hard enough to send bursts of stars through her vision. Both of them cried out in pain nearly simultaneously, although Nick colorfully invoked Tepēyōllōtl's name in a way that nonetheless seemed more sincere than the thanks he had given to Macuilxōchitl after his gambling wins.

Judy pushed her paws against Nick's chest as she scrabbled forward on top of him until she was straddling his neck, trying to see into his face even as the tips of his ears tickled the bottoms of her feet. "Are you alright?" she asked, trying to ignore the pulsating pain in her own head, "Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean—"

Nick was panting, his tongue lolling out one side of his mouth, and Judy could feel his arm twitch weakly against her. "No, no," he said, sounding more than a little dazed, "We never said punching wasn't allowed."

He sucked air in between his teeth as he gingerly reached across Judy and felt at his eye, his expression contorting into a grimace that exposed his many sharp teeth. "If anyone says you hit like a bunny, do me a favor and actually hit them," Nick said, and there was some of his usual charm in his voice again, "I want to see the reaction."

Judy felt none of the triumph she had just a moment before Nick had vanished into his little metal dome; any sense of victory was completely lost in how obviously she had hurt him. It was only supposed to be a sparring match, but what if she had blinded him? Hitting a mammal in the eye was always dangerous; she could have just tried going for his chest even after his head had become the perfect target. "I'm really sorry. Here, let me look at it," she said, and she brushed away the paw he had clamped over his eye.

Judy leaned over his head, bringing her own face so close to his that she could feel every warm and damp puff of his breath ruffling the fur of her cheek. Nick's uninjured eye was fixed on her face, and the other had already started swelling shut. Judy didn't think she had done any permanent damage, but the knot of guilt in her stomach refused to loosen. "I'm sorry," she said again, and her voice was thick.

Nick awkwardly patted at her back. "You're an interesting mammal, Ensign Carrots. And, if you'll forgive me saying so, a heavy one. So if you wouldn't mind..." he said, and there was something in both his voice and in the expression in his face that Judy couldn't quite place.

The words sounded exactly like him, but there was something about his tone that wasn't quite right, something beneath his perpetual good natured teasing. Before she could pursue the thought any further, however, Judy realized she had been sitting with her legs wrapped around the wonderfully soft and fluffy fur of Nick's neck (and wasn't _that_ an odd thing to be thinking about in the moment?) with her gaze focused on Nick's face for a moment that had likely drawn out a little too long. She hastily stumbled away from him, feeling her ears burning in embarrassment. Nick pushed himself heavily to his feet, his footfalls plodding as he walked over to his discarded sabre and scooped it up. "A wager's a wager," he said, as he presented it hilt-first to Judy, "I can adjust it for you tomorrow."

He chuckled weakly and added, "I'm going to sleep like the dead tonight."

Judy didn't particularly care about the sword and made no motion to grab it. "Do you need any help with your eye? Are you hurt anywhere else?" she asked.

Nick waved one paw in what would have likely come across as a careless gesture if he had done a better job of modulating the energy he put into it; his arm fell lazily to his side instead. "I'll manage," he said, "I've got some incomplete philosopher's stones I can use."

Judy remembered seeing the distinctive glow of incomplete stones in Nick's heavy bag of belongings, and the anxiety in her gut loosened a degree. "What about you?" he asked, looking her up and down with his head tilted so his one good eye was focused on her, "Any injuries?"

She shook her head vigorously. "I'm fine," Judy added hastily.

There was a brief silence, broken only by the mournful howling of wind across the wastelands, before Nick held out his sword again. "Come on, take it," he urged, "You won it fair and square."

It really was a beautiful blade; even covered in grit the care that had gone into its creation was obvious, but it was no more tempting than when he had first presented it. "No," she said, "I shouldn't have—"

"Take it," Nick urged, "You're going to need a sabre anyway once you make captain, right? I'd like it to be one of mine. Word of mouth is the best advertising, you know."

Judy reluctantly closed one paw around the grip, which was too wide for her to hold comfortably, and took it from him. "Fine," she said, "But only if you let me give you that favor."

Nick chuckled again, and there seemed to be some of his former strength in it. "Well who am I to argue with Ensign Tochtli of the City Guard?" he asked, spreading his paws out.

He staggered off in the direction of his tent, pausing to call back over his shoulder. "I can fix your spear tomorrow, too. You probably don't want to touch it again tonight. Oh, and wash your paws."

"What?" Judy said; she was more than a little surprised at the seeming non sequitur.

"I overdid it when I weakened it," Nick said, "It was _supposed_ to break when you blocked my spear thrust."

He shrugged his shoulders, as though it was any kind of answer. Besides confirming the obvious—that alchemy had been involved—he hadn't really answered her unasked question. "I did tell you," he added, "The flaws are the hard part to get right."

"With alchemy, you mean," Judy said, and Nick nodded slowly.

"With alchemy," he agreed.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Before any chapter-specific notes, there are two items I would like to bring up:

This past week on FF, a reader going by Deathsmallcaps left a comment saying that they drew a picture of Princess Isabel based on this story. I can't say enough how honored I am; from the comment Deathsmallcaps left I can tell a lot of effort was put into it. Unfortunately, FF's anti-spam policy ate the link to the image that was provided, leaving only the following text:

gallery/1fWj6PG

If Deathsmallcaps or someone else can provide me with the full link, I'd be incredibly grateful and I'll definitely link to it!

Also this past week, this story was featured on the Zootopia News Network with a lovely write up by the one and only DrummerMax64. It means a lot to me to be considered worthy of being featured, and if you found this story through ZNN I'm happy to have your readership. If you're unfamiliar with ZNN, it's definitely worth checking out as a wonderful resource for everything from fan fiction and fan art to updates on official news about Zootopia merchandise, character cameos and (hopefully someday soon) sequel news. Thank you again, Max!

As for this chapter itself, I'll begin my notes by saying that my intent is that Judy's spear is made out of aluminum. Although aluminum is a very common metal, and is actually the third most common element (after oxygen and silicon) in the Earth's crust, it wasn't isolated until 1824. The reason for this is that aluminum is extremely reactive, and thus it is essentially only found bound up in minerals. However, I figure that in the world of the setting alchemy would make aluminum much easier to extract, hence its appearance here. As to why only the shaft of Judy's spear is aluminum, and not Nick's sword, aluminum has a number of properties that make it a poor choice for blades. Although it is lightweight and easily forms an oxide layer when exposed to air (and thus doesn't rust like steel), it's too soft and doesn't hold an edge well, and can be more prone to stress fractures.

The specific way in which Nick ruined Judy's spear is by transmuting a portion of the handle into mercury; mercury reacts with aluminum in an interesting way. That's the reason, incidentally, why airplanes don't allow mercury thermometers to be taken aboard; mercury seriously damages aluminum structures if it comes into contact. Essentially, what happens is that, if the oxide layer protecting the aluminum is worn away and the metal itself is exposed, it'll react with the mercury to form an amalgam. In the presence of moisture, this reaction quickly oxidizes the aluminum and produces elemental mercury, which forms an amalgam with the aluminum and continues the cycle. This can form long, hairy-looking "wires" from the aluminum, which will quickly weaken.

Nick's later caution to Judy not to touch her damaged spear, and to wash her paws before eating anything, is a good one; although elemental mercury as a liquid is not especially toxic if you ingest it, you should very much avoid inhaling mercury vapor.

Macuilxōchitl was previously referenced in chapter 1 as the god that Nick gives thanks to after winning a game of chance, one of the god's domains. Tepēyōllōtl is the god of animals, caves, echoes and earthquakes; I figured he'd be on Nick's mind considering his gambit in this last round relied on hiding underground in an artificial cave.

Nick did, in fact, comment that when using alchemy it's easier to make something structurally flawless than something flawed back in chapter 3.

Although Judy is, technically, already an officer, this chapter further suggests that sabres can only be worn by captains or higher, which was first suggested in chapter 7.

Hopefully you found this a satisfying conclusion to their duel; the next chapter featuring Nick and Judy will see them finally arrive in Phoenix, which as a setting was a lot of fun to create. Thanks again for reading, and as always I'd love to know what you thought if you're so inclined!


	12. Chapter 12

The difference between Corazón and Cencerro, so far as Bogo could tell, was with their ends rather than their means. Both mammals, he was sure, wanted nothing more than to be the most trusted advisor to the queen—and in Cencerro's case, that meant a constant struggle to retain her position—but it was the reason why they wanted that position that differed. Corazón wanted to be loved, to be admired and respected. It made his words seem to drip with falsehood at nearly every turn as he flattered and cajoled and otherwise wormed his way into the good graces of other mammals. Cencerro simply wanted power.

It made the little ewe dangerous; no matter what she might say about wanting to do something for the good of the citizens of Zootopia or out of altruism, Bogo could all but see the cold calculations that ran behind her eyes. In the past, Bogo's concerns about what she might do had been limited by the simple fact that she had little of Corazón's charisma that, in small doses, made a mammal feel like the center of universe. Lady Alba Cencerro was, despite all her skill at planning and strategy, timid and awkward at speaking in public. Being the power behind the throne, behind the queen's presence and grace that could all but be felt, was probably the best Cencerro could ever hope to achieve.

But Bogo had seen too many mammals make foolish moves due to naked ambition and greed to discount the possibility that Cencerro might have it in her to make a play for the throne; the history of Zootopia was full of criminals whose reach had exceeded their grasp, from ancient would-be nobles like Oztoyehuatl to the more modern crime lords like Alfonso of New Quimichin. It was why, when Cencerro laid out her proposal to cede control of a significant amount of her personal forces, that Bogo found himself somewhat more suspicious than when Cerdo had done the same.

It wasn't simply a matter of Cencerro seeming less sincere—if Bogo automatically discounted mammals for being insincere he suspected Corazón would have even more victories to his credit—but that she was taking the same action as one of her rivals. One of the sad facts of politics that bitter experience had taught Bogo was the high value of novelty; the first mammal to do something tended to reap far greater rewards than those that followed them, even if their own efforts were surpassed. Even as Bogo listened to Cencerro going through the bland details, his face a neutral mask, he tried desperately to figure out her play. Was she making a less than ideal move because it was still her best means of retaining power? Was she, in fact, working with Cerdo? It didn't seem possible, as the pig and the sheep didn't seem particularly fond of each other; if Bogo had to guess at which two of the queen's top advisors would conspire together it would be Cencerro and Corazón if only because they had something of a tendency to opportunistically use the other.

Rather than show Cencerro any of what he was thinking, though, Bogo simply inclined his head gravely and pretended to be paying rapt attention. "The city and crown appreciate your sacrifice, Lady Cencerro," he said, and she beamed up at him.

"It's the least I can do," she said, "Especially since Cerdo is doing the same."

Bogo supposed she might have revealed her angle; Corazón would have no choice but to do the same, and he would look like even more of a follower being the last to do so. It would also put all three of them, Corazón, Cerdo, and Cencerro, on an even playing field, which was where Cencerro's advantage was probably the greatest. Bogo simply made a noncommittal noise and said, "I'll have the orders sent over to the central barracks at once," rising from his desk as he did so.

"Oh, Captain General?" Cencerro said, obviously not taking the hint that their conversation was over, "There was just one more thing."

Bogo paused, simply looking down at her wordlessly. "I was wondering if you found out how that dreadful llama made it into the palace," Cencerro said, her words seemingly guileless, "If there's anything I can do to help—you know I've spent more time in this drafty old place than just about anyone else, it's like a home to me—you just say the word."

Bogo gave himself a long moment as he considered the ewe's words. As a matter of fact, the question of how the llama had made it so far into the palace was the one that he found the most troubling, because it seemed to be the pivotal question that would answer everything. The would-be assassin had not been one of the many servants who worked in the palace, and the stonemason's guild he belonged to wasn't one that the crown would have ever dreamed of using for work on the palace. Frankly, Jorge de Cuvier didn't even bear a passing resemblance to any of the few llamas that did work in the palace, and even if he did none of them had missed a shift.

The palace was a labyrinth of passages, one Bogo had thought he knew as well as anyone could, and while some of the hidden passageways had their uses—if the palace was ever sieged, the royal family would always have a way out—it was certainly possible that there were ones that he didn't know about. Considering that a few hundred years ago King Felipe III was said to have ordered the execution of everyone who had worked on what had at the time been the most significant renovation in the palace's history to preserve its secrets, it was entirely possible that there were secret passageways that no one living knew about. But anything that could be hidden could be found; even the most careful of criminals couldn't possibly eliminate every single piece of evidence. "Consider the word spoken, Lady Cencerro," Bogo said at last.

Cencerro smiled up at him again. "Anything I can do to help our queen," she said, her voice almost nauseating in its sweetness.

Sometimes—not often, but sometimes—Cencerro almost looked as though she really cared. Perhaps she did, when it came to the queen; the two had known each other for their entire lives, and whatever faults the little ewe had she had always been a good friend to the queen. But perhaps, as Corazón had implied, Cencerro was angling to be named the queen's successor should anything happen to the princess. Lady Cencerro was married, after all, and had already produced an heir of her own that would neatly ensure that the royal family remained full-blooded sheep.

"Speak to one of my generals, then," Bogo said, and made his way through the rituals of farewells as rapidly as he could, all the while despairing at the situation the queen had put herself in.

The three mammals the queen relied on most, her most trusted and longest serving advisers, were also the most likely suspects of the attempted murder of her daughter. An attempted murder that had followed what might not have been the poor luck of illness on the prince consort's part. As Bogo made his way out of his office and stalked off for the grand staircase that led to the queen's residence, he repeated a promise to himself he must have made a thousand times. _If the queen_ ever _gets it in her head to grant me a title of nobility I'm turning her down._

* * *

The long walk up to the queen's residence might have winded a mammal who didn't take care of themselves the way Bogo did; his wife was fond of saying that he looked exactly the way he did on the day they married. It wasn't true, of course; there were the threads of white that had started working themselves into the rich gray of his fur and he needed glasses to read anything not meant to be seen from twenty paces, but unlike so many of his contemporaries all of his old clothes still fit. Not that he would have worn them for anyone but Maria; his wife was inexplicably fond of his old ruff collar that had mercifully become unfashionable right around the same time their daughter had been born.

Bogo shook his head slightly as he approached the guards on either side of the massive golden double door that led to the queen's set of rooms, trying to force his idle thoughts away. For some reason he felt as though he was becoming more prone to distraction, as if his thoughts were steering themselves. No matter what Maria might say he was getting older, and his days of working three split shifts in a row and still feeling focused and energetic were long over. He had to accept his own limits, the same as any of his other officers; the two horses guarding the queen looked as though they had just stepped out of the barracks they were so immaculately uniformed and alert.

He was sure he looked nowhere near as crisp, but the horses saluted him all the same, pounding the butts of their spears against the cool stone of the hallway that the overly plush carpet didn't cover, before announcing his presence. Bogo barely had time to appreciate the engravings on the massive golden doors, which showed the family tree of the royal family all the way from King Oveja I to Princess Isabel complete with exquisite depictions of each royal. Excluding, of course, the princess. Her likeness, as per a tradition that had gone on so long that no one could remember who had started it, would be added above her name on her twentieth birthday. Or, as Bogo remembered, his stomach souring, on the day she died if she didn't live that long.

There were more than a few members of the royal family depicted as lambs in mute testimony to their short lives, but they thankfully vanished from sight as the doors opened outwards, hiding the family tree on the fronts of the doors to reveal the far simpler engravings on their backs: the royal family motto PLUS ULTRA in letters nearly four feet tall. That the letters didn't appear oversized was a testament to how enormous the golden doors on their massive hinges were; each door likely contained enough gold to gild the entire palace, inside and out, had they been melted down.

Mercifully, the queen's tastes were not nearly as ostentatious as whichever forgotten member of the royal family had ordered the creation of the doors, and the interior of her suite of rooms resembled a conservatory full of beautifully cultivated plants more than anything else. When Queen Lana had ascended to the throne she had ordered the formerly gloomy suites opened up, with the windows expanded and the ancient tapestries with their gold and silver threads pulled from the walls. The floor was, through what could only be an incredible amount of effort, grass rather than either carpet or bare stone, and Bogo enjoyed the simple feel of it against his toes as he entered. The ceiling was nearly twenty feet above Bogo's head, and since it wouldn't have been practical to demolish everything above the royal apartments to have a glass roof the next best thing had been done. An incredible dome of diamond and elegantly curving steel had been built and alchemical torches placed in the ceiling beyond it, with elaborate clockwork to make the lights perfectly match the stars at night. For the daytime, the ceiling beyond the dome had been painted a vivid shade of blue that reality rarely matched, and an enormous alchemical torch in a great blown glass fixture made a convincing duplicate of the sun. Hidden fans blew gentle breezes, barely enough to make the grass and other plants ripple but undeniably there, and the gentle murmur of a small waterfall and a stream that led to a pond large enough for an elephant to use as a bathtub completed the idyllic scene.

The queen and the princess were where Bogo had expected to find them, sitting beside the pond with their feet in the water. Commoners expected royalty to always crowns and clothes so richly made that they could double as anchors, and considering that tended to be true of any appearance a commoner might see it was a perfectly understandable misapprehension. That didn't prevent it from being wrong; both the queen and the princess had changed from their elaborate gowns into simple shifts of pure white linen, and neither wore any sign of office besides the way they carried themselves even at rest, their platinum torcs free of adornments. If it hadn't been for the slightly anxious look that both mammals had shot in Bogo's direction, even with the escort of guards that took him to the edge of the pond, Bogo might almost have believed that neither had any more care than relaxing after a taxing day.

Bogo had scarcely begun to bow before the queen interrupted. "Sit down, Bogo," she said, "You'll give me a crick in my neck looking up at you."

There was a ghost of the queen's typical smile on her face; she had said the same words, or near enough, to Bogo that he felt as though he had heard every possible spin that could be put on them, from genuine humor to irritation to bland routine. This time, it had sounded closer to humor, albeit with a thin and tense undercurrent of fear. She was putting on a brave face for her daughter, he was sure, and he sympathized; the burden of being queen was a tremendous one that he did not envy. Princess Isabel would have to learn to do the same, to hide away the fear he saw plainly written across her face.

Bogo lowered himself to the ground; even sitting the queen would have to look up at him. The princess was tall enough, though, due to the strange proportions her nature as a chimera granted her and Bogo found himself surprised, wondering how long that had been the case. She really was growing up incredibly quickly, and when she spoke her tone was almost heartbreakingly similar to her deceased father. "Captain General," she said, "What have you learned so far?"

Bogo glanced at the queen, his gesture so small he was sure it was barely noticeable, and she gave an equally subtle nod. He launched into a summary of what he had learned, falling into the cadence of a report with the ease born of doing so untold thousands of times in front of superiors that ranged from the lowly lieutenant who had done his best to make Ensign Bogo's service in the City Guard as miserable as possible to the queen and the prince consort. When at last he had reached the end of his recitation, including but not speculating on the transfers of troops from Cencerro and Cerdo, both the queen and princess were quiet for a long moment.

At last, the queen spoke, but not to Bogo. Rather, she turned her head to look at her daughter as though he wasn't there. "What would you do, my dear?" she asked.

The princess considered it, and Bogo found himself reminded of how much she was the daughter of both her parents despite her unique appearance. Her coat of what wasn't quite wool and wasn't quite fur was darker than her mother's pure white wool yet lighter than her father's midnight black fur, but the tip of her tail twitched as her father's had when he was deep in thought and one clawed paw went beneath her chin in a gesture Bogo had seen her mother do countless times. "Even if we announce nothing," Isabel began, somewhat hesitantly, "Rumors will spread. Mammals will notice that there are more guards than normal and they might jump to conclusions. It might cause a panic."

It was clear to Bogo that it was something that the princess had been expecting to be asked, and he noted how closely the queen was watching her daughter's answer, still ignoring him completely. The princess, however, was not, her eyes occasionally flickering from her mother to him. "But if we do announce that someone..." Isabel began, and then swallowed so hard Bogo could see her throat bob even underneath her pure platinum torc, "That someone tried killing me, we look weak."

"Even though the attempt was unsuccessful?" Queen Isabel asked, her tone quite conversational.

"Mammals will say the City Guard..." Isabel trailed off again, her eyes darting to Bogo for a long moment before she continued, "They'll say the City Guard failed."

The princess seemed to expect that Bogo would have winced or protested, but he bore the remark with no comment, simply inclining his head. She was right that the City Guard had failed, and if Bogo had taken offense every time someone told him he had made a mistake he never would have made lieutenant, let alone captain general. His burden was not nearly as vast as the one the royal family carried, but ultimately every failure of the City Guard belonged to him. "Mammals might panic," Isabel continued, seemingly once she was sure Bogo wasn't going to say anything.

"That's true," the queen agreed, "Mammals might panic either way. But you haven't answered my question. What would you do?"

Isabel's mouth opened and closed wordlessly, her poise suddenly ruined. She was, after all, not yet fully grown, and there was no shame in that. "I..." the princess began, "I would..."

She stopped and took a deep breath even as her mother continued keenly watching her. "What would you recommend, Captain General?" Isabel asked suddenly.

To Bogo's great surprise, the queen suddenly laughed, clapping her hooves together in apparent delight. "Very good, my dear!" she said, "Never forget that you have mammals to advise you."

When a thoughtful frown began to spread across the princess's face, the queen entwined one hoof in her daughter's considerably larger paw. "But never forget the final decision, for good or ill, is always yours."

"I recommend making the attempt known," Bogo said, "Some mammals have grown so used to peace that they forget the City Guard does anything at all."

The princess nodded. "I agree," she said, "Mother, what do you recommend?"

"We can offer a reward for anyone who knows anything about why this Jorge de Cuvier tried to kill you," the queen said, and there was a darkness about her words that hadn't been there before.

Bogo had been surprised when the queen started laughing, apparently turning the assassination attempt against her daughter into a teaching moment little different from what she had been doing in the council room at the time of the attack. However, that surprise was nothing compared to what he felt when the princess burst into tears and threw herself against her mother. Her entire body heaved with sobs, her arms gripping the queen so tightly Bogo wasn't sure she could breathe, and at first Bogo couldn't make out Isabel's words. "Is—is—isn't it o-obvious?" she asked, "It's—it's b-b-because I'm a _freak!_ "

She all but spat the last word, but even as her mother tried to say something Isabel plowed on. "I've seen what mammals write... What they _say_... How they..." she said, and then her words were lost to more tears.

Bogo, unfortunately, knew exactly what she meant. Not even a month ago, the City Guard had forcibly disbanded a society running a printing press they used to make pamphlets about the supposed true nature of the princess, who they claimed was an unthinking monster who could only speak at all because a blood magician was magically manipulating her like a puppet. Smashing the press and arresting the mammals involved for the crime of lèse-majesté wasn't enough to have stopped their message from getting out, and while Bogo believed that most mammals saw their claims for the nonsense they were that didn't mean there wasn't an audience for such lunacy.

"You aren't a freak," the queen said, rubbing at her daughter's back soothingly, "You're not."

"But—" Isabel began, but the queen cut her off.

"But some mammals will believe any nonsense they think explains why they live such miserable lives. Anything to blame anyone but themselves. Bogo, do you remember the rumors about my father?" the queen said.

"That he used quauhxicallis to hunt mammals for sport," Bogo replied instantly.

He was, in truth, somewhat grateful that the queen was taking the lead in soothing the princess's fears; it had been difficult enough finding the words to say when it had been his own daughter crying (and he wasn't sure he had ever quite found the perfect words), and she hadn't been a chimera. "That's right," the queen said, chuckling a little, "And they said my grandmother used the blood of innocent lambs to stay young. It's all nonsense."

"But none of that was true!" Isabel protested, her voice somewhat muffled from how her head rested against her mother's shoulder, "I _am_ —"

"Only alive because of magic?" the queen snapped, "So is everyone living in Zootopia. Maybe it's not obvious to the mammals who never leave the barony they were born in, but look out that window."

Despite how much larger her daughter was, Queen Lana pulled Isabel to her feet before Bogo could so much as move to help. She led the princess over to one of the enormous windows and gestured sweepingly. "Do you see all of it?" she asked, her words more gentle, "None of that exists and none of us eat without magic."

Isabel heaved a choked sob, but she looked out the window as her mother had instructed. Bogo did the same, looming behind them, looking out over Zootopia from much higher up than from out of the window in his office. In early twilight the city was a magnificent series of glowing lights, spreading very nearly as far as the eye could see. The enormous aqueducts that carried water from the city-state's center to the edges of the Middle Baronies looked like spider webs, the water burning orange in the fading light of day and seeming to go on forever. It was too dark and they were too high up for Bogo's eyes to make out any mammals on the ground far below, but perhaps Isabel's vision was more like her father than her mother and she could see the countless mammals still going about their business even as the light of day rapidly dimmed. Even at night, the city wouldn't really sleep, and there would still be incredible masses of mammals lining the streets as they went to their jobs or simply enjoyed themselves.

"Your father saw you as a symbol of what makes Zootopia work," the queen continued quietly, "And so do I. More so than any king or queen who came before you, you can understand it all. Predator and prey, blood magic and alchemy. Everything."

Isabel sniffled, and when she spoke again she sounded as though she had a bad cold. "Thank you," she said, and Bogo felt deeply uncomfortable at having witnessed a moment that should have remained between the two of them, as though he were an intruder.

"Now," Isabel said, and her voice was regaining some of its previous poise as she turned away from the window to face him, "Captain General, let's discuss some of the details about the speech you'll give."

Bogo didn't particularly care for public speaking but knew better than to protest, and so he simply bowed low. "Of course, my liege," he said, his voice as gravelly and proper as it ever was.

When he straightened himself up, he saw something on Isabel's face he hadn't seen since before the attack. She was, however slightly, despite how tear-stained her face was, smiling.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Previously, I had asked for help with a link to a piece of fan art reader Deathsmallcaps drew. Happily, Deathsmallcaps was able to provide a working link to the fan art they made of Princess Isabel, which can be seen here if you get rid of the spaces and add a period after the word imgur:

imgur com /a/1fWj6PG/

I want to say just how much I appreciate it, Deathsmallcaps! This is the first time anyone has ever drawn fan art for something I wrote, and I can't say how much that means to me. I'll always treasure it, and I hope that you'll continue to enjoy the story!

There have been six kings of Spain who went by Felipe, making it a natural choice for a long-ago ruler. Rumors of kings ordering the deaths of craftsmen to preserve the secrets of what they built are something of a cliché, and have been occasionally spread libelously.

Ruff collars were in fashion from about the middle of the 16th century to the middle of the 17th before they fell out of favor. In Spain, King Phillip IV actually banned them in 1623 for political reasons. The idea of banning a piece of clothing by royal decree might sound a little odd, but there was definitely some logic behind it. By the 17th century, ruffs had become so large that they required elaborate internal supports and daily washing and starching to maintain their shape. Additionally, ruffs were also tinted with dyes produced by Spain's then-enemy, the Dutch, which gave another reason for critics to protest against them. In essence, they became seen as an unmanly display of vulgar excess (some sneeringly referring to men who wore them as soft and feminine) due to the cost and effort needed to maintain them, and they were even seen as not being sufficiently patriotic.

The vagaries of fashion in this world varied a bit from the real world, but if there's anything that can be counted on it's that fashions change; it's one of the ways I want to make the setting feel real. Bogo's wife being fond of how he looks in a ruff (and Bogo wearing one for her in private no matter how much he personally dislikes it) is one of those compromises that probably says a lot about how deep his gruff and harsh exterior really goes.

The motto "plus ultra" is Latin for "further beyond" and does appear in the Spanish coat of arms, having been adopted by King Charles I following Christopher Columbus's successful journey to the New World. It's a reversal of a warning said to have been inscribed at the Strait of Gibraltar ("non terrae plus ultra" meaning "no land further beyond") at the time that was the end of the known world.

One of gold's most remarkable properties is how malleable it is; a single gram of gold can be beaten into a sheet a meter (roughly three feet) on each side. However, considering how large the palace has been said to be, the doors are still extremely large. I figure that in a world with alchemy gold isn't nearly as valuable as it is in our world; it's not completely worthless, but it's still intended to be impressive.

As part of the description of Princess Isabel in this chapter, her father the prince consort is described as being midnight black. About six percent of jaguars have this appearance, but they do also have the pattern of rosettes that more typically colored jaguars do. In one of the movie's impressive moments of attention to detail, depending on the lighting the pattern on Mr. Manchas's fur is visible.

The term "lèse-majesté" is a real one, and means crimes against the dignity of the crown. It's a law that really only exists in monarchies, where mocking or insulting the ruler can be a punishable offense.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought!


	13. Chapter 13

True to Nick's word, he was not up with the sun the following morning. Even after Judy had completely finished her morning training routine (using the spear that Nick had made himself instead of her own, which was still in two pieces) despite the protests of her muscles from the previous night, cleaned herself up, and eaten, she could still hear his gentle snores coming from his tent as she sat and looked off in the distance at Phoenix, turning the little golden carrot Nick had made her over and over in her paws. With nothing to do but wait for him to wake up, the memory of her fist connecting with his eye came back into her mind, unbidden, for what must have been about the hundredth time. Judy felt her ears drooping against the back of her neck, but even shaking her head couldn't clear the guilt she felt.

Her victory against Nick had been far from her first win in a sparring match; despite being easily the smallest member of her graduating class at the academy she had successfully fought her way to the top of the ranks. It wasn't even the first time that she had injured someone in a bout; Judy could vividly remember knocking a tooth out of the mouth of one of her fellow cadets with a particularly well-timed kick. The difference between that fight and the one against Nick, though, was that Nick was a civilian and not a fellow trainee.

Perhaps it was simply that Nick was also a fox, but the previous night, as she had tossed and turned trying to fall asleep, Judy had kept returning to the uncomfortable memory of Gideon and how he had clawed her face. It had been the pleasure, she had decided at last; in the moment before her torc had reached out and inflicted an identical wound the young fox's face had been full of the simple cruel pleasure of hurting her. Judy felt ashamed of the brief moment of pleasure she had felt, and had tried thinking up a way of really apologizing to Nick; she found herself wishing that he had been a bunny too.

If he had been a bunny (and Judy had briefly entertained the notion of a russet-furred buck with brilliantly green eyes lazily half-hooded and a seemingly perpetually smug expression), showing how sincerely she meant her apology would have been easy. She could have helped groom him, but she had no idea how a fox would take it; the last thing she wanted was to make him more uncomfortable, no matter how wonderfully soft his fur had to—Judy's thoughts were interrupted by Nick staggering out of his tent looking rather well-worn. His fur was completely disheveled, his ears and tail both drooping pathetically. His left eye was bloodshot and puffy, and his right wasn't visible beneath a faintly glowing strip of fabric wrapped around his head. Judy winced at the sight; seeing again how she had accidentally hurt him brought with it a fresh wave of guilt. "It's not that bad, is it?" Nick asked lightly, "Here, is this better?"

As he spoke, he unwrapped the bandage from around his head, and Judy caught a brief glimpse of the interior of it—the inside surface of the part of it that had been over his eye had a complicated pattern of interlocking circles and triangles that glowed with an odd pinkish color unlike anything Judy had ever seen before in the academy's infirmary—before she was distracted by the change in his face.

Judy was very familiar with how black eyes looked (and, thanks to one of her instructors, she knew precisely how they felt), and even with immediate treatment with an incomplete philosopher's stone Judy had never seen one disappear completely in less than two days. Judy had expected Nick's eye to still be swollen shut, but it looked perfectly normal. In fact, the eye she had hit actually looked better considering that the other was bloodshot. "Still doubting my alchemy, I see," Nick said with an easy smile as he seemed to take in her surprise, "I did tell you, I have powers beyond the ken of most mammals. Besides, you didn't hit me _that_ hard."

He waggled his fingers as he repeated his boast, the same as he had the previous night, and Judy found a sense of relief swelling in her chest. For him to heal so fast even with the aid of alchemy it must really not have been all that serious a hit, and while she still wasn't proud of hitting an innocent civilian in the eye it did help assuage her guilt a little. "I'm still really sorry," Judy said, and Nick waved her apology aside.

"I'm perfectly alright," Nick said cheerfully, "Now here, let me see that spear of yours."

True to Nick's instructions, Judy had left the broken pieces of her spear where they were, although the odd sort of hairiness that the metal had taken on had continued to spread up both pieces of the shaft from where they had split. Nick repaired the break Judy had made in the circle he had drawn the previous night and quickly drew a square around the spear, setting up his elemental focuses at the intersections of the square and the circle. She supposed that, although he had already shown her that he was capable of transmuting materials incredibly fast when he wanted to, doing so more slowly took less effort, because it took him about a minute to repair her spear. Unlike his rapid transmutations the previous night, where the material seemed to simply briefly burst with light, Judy saw the spear's shaft distinctly go through each of the color changes as it flowed back together before Nick lifted it and gave it to her.

Although Judy had always done her best to keep her duty spear in as close to parade-ready condition as possible, it had still picked up some scuffs and scrapes from normal use. Now, though, her spear had a strip about an inch wide that was perfectly and faultlessly smooth and shiny from where Nick had rejoined the metal, but there was otherwise absolutely no kind of visible seam or joint. In fact, it looked more as though someone had buffed a single portion of the shaft rather than that it had ever been in two pieces, and the spear's balance was completely unaffected.

Nick next set to work adjusting his sword, spreading out the cloth he had wrapped it in and positioning his focuses on it. In the light of morning, and at a much closer distance, Judy saw that the complicated pattern of triangles drawn on it hadn't been made with simple lines; each triangle was actually composed of lines of text, the letters rather cramped, although since Judy couldn't read the Dead Tongue she had no idea what they said although some of the words looked vaguely familiar. Before she could take a closer look, Nick had put his sabre on the cloth, after which he traced a few lines through the gritty dirt to where he sat, connecting it to the pattern already on the fabric. He placed his paws on either side of the sword and Judy felt the air seem to sharpen again, her fur standing on end, and watched as the sabre changed. Even as the color seemed to flow out of it, making it completely black, the sabre was shrinking. But rather than simply becoming smaller all over, Judy noticed that the pommel at the end of the hilt was actually growing larger, stretching and shifting into something that Judy at first couldn't recognize. As the sabre started to glow, though, the blade thickening somewhat, the ornament Nick had added to the pommel became unmistakable; it could only be—"A pretty good likeness, wouldn't you say?" Nick said, nodding his head in apparent approval of his own work even as he carelessly tossed away a little shiny cylinder of metal that seemed to be leftover from making the sword smaller.

The ornament on the pommel was, unquestionably, a miniature representation of a fox's head. Moreover, it was a representation of Nick's head. Unlike some officer's sabres Judy had seen, where the mammal wielding it had decorated the end with a little ornamental head of the same species they belonged to looking as fierce as possible, the little fox head had a perfectly recognizable half-smirk across its face and was winking one eye. It was playful in a way Judy had never seen a sword be before, but she thought it perfectly fit the character of the swordmaker. Besides, she thought suddenly, once she was done escorting Nick to Phoenix, and helping him buy the book he wanted, she might never see him again. The little representation of him at the end of the sword might be the only thing to remember him by for a very long time; if he made a habit of traveling back and forth to Phoenix and she got assigned to the Inner Baronies, their paths would simply never cross.

"It's perfect," Judy said, and Nick seemed to swell in satisfaction even as he gave the sword over to her.

Although the ornament had caught the majority of Judy's attention, she had noticed how the blade had thickened after it had first been remolded to fit her, and as she took the blade in one paw she saw why. The edge of the blade was no longer dull; there was a thin, transparent edge to it that caught the light and sparkled. "It's very sharp," Nick warned, "Try not to touch the edge."

She had been about to test the edge with one finger, but quickly pulled it back at Nick's words. He offered her a sheath he had pulled from his pack, and Judy put the sword away with no small amount of regret; it was perfectly balanced and sized for her, but she couldn't in good conscience wear it with her uniform until she made captain. "Now that _that's_ taken care of, it's time for me to get ready," Nick said, rubbing his paws briskly to get the dirt off them, "I can't be seen walking into Phoenix looking like this."

"Do you want any help with that?" Judy asked, the words out of her mouth before she really had a chance to think about them.

She froze in horror as the realization as to what she had just said struck her; he had given her the perfect opportunity to show the sincerity of her apology in the way she would another bunny, and her response had been all but automatic. Nick arched an eyebrow, his eyes looking her up and down with surprising scrutiny, and then he shrugged. "Why not? I'd rather reach Phoenix before it gets dark."

In the end, even as Judy found herself brushing Nick's tail—which was just as luxuriously soft and fluffy as it looked; her fingers holding the brush could completely vanish into it—she couldn't help but wonder why he had agreed. Was it simply because, as he had claimed, he wanted to save time getting ready himself? Or perhaps foxes who were close friends helped groom each other the way bunnies did; Judy didn't know any foxes well enough to make a guess one way or the other. She couldn't even say if he thought she was his friend or if he was simply being polite to his escort. Whatever the case, Nick seemed to preen at the attention; there was absolutely no tension in his body. He had changed into a fresh pair of trousers and a tunic and was seeing to the fur of his head and neck even as Judy brushed the tangles out of his tail.

After eyeing her work and judging it satisfactory (although he did add, with mock severity, that it didn't count as the favor she had promised him), Nick put on a fresh coat he had pulled from his seemingly bottomless bag and declared himself ready to go. The rest of their walk to Phoenix passed in easy and pleasant conversation; if Nick held any kind of grudge about being punched in the face he didn't show it.

As they got close enough to really see Phoenix, Judy found herself a little disappointed at how plain and rough it looked. Considering that she had learned it had been built on the ruins of the Quimichpatlan Barony, Judy had expected something more like the Inner Baronies, or failing that even like her own home in Tochtli Barony. But instead of graceful towers and squat stepped pyramids, even in ruins, or fields of rustling grain and the occasional farmhouse, Phoenix looked to have been built mostly from the collapsed stone of the Outer Wall; all of the buildings she could see were made of irregular chunks of white stone that were only vaguely cube-shaped and none of them would have been more than two stories tall for any mammal larger than a jaguar.

Phoenix was, admittedly, an entirely respectable size; there could easily be a few thousand residents Judy's size or larger without it being cramped. Still, knowing that it was built on the ruins of the barony where a conspiracy of vampire bat blood magicians had plotted to overthrow the second king of Zootopia, Judy had expected something a little more visually distinct. Then again, she supposed that the alchemists of King Oveja II had simply been thorough; in response to what was undeniably treason the king had ordered Quimichpatlan Barony to be completely destroyed.

It was a pity, though, that there wasn't anything left, not even a memorial like the one so close to where Judy grew up that marked where the Middle Wall had been breached and then repaired. Judy's thoughts must have shown on her face, because Nick said, "Disappointed, Carrots?"

A slight smile touched his features as he awaited her response, both of them still walking along the path that led into Phoenix itself. "A little," Judy admitted, "I expected Phoenix to be..."

She trailed off, unable to find the right word, but Nick's smile broadened into a grin. "Do you hear a waterfall?" he asked.

"Yes," Judy said, and suddenly realized how strange that was; the aqueducts from the Inner Baronies didn't reach Phoenix, or else Nick wouldn't have had a contract to bid for on purifying water from wells, but there weren't any bodies of water that she could see.

"Over there," Nick said, gesturing her over to a stone lattice railing that went alongside one edge of the path, "You can look down if you want."

Judy remembered that Nick had seemed afraid of heights when they had crossed the Cozamalotl Bridge, and as she walked over to the railing she expected to see a similar gorge. Through the stone lattice she could see sheets of water flowing over the edge of a crack in the earth, but when she looked down to see where the water collected she at first couldn't believe what she was seeing.

When Judy had been young, perhaps seven or eight, wasps had built a nest in one of the less frequently used sheds on her parents' estate. The shed had been full of battered old furniture that her father had said he would eventually fix up (although he had made that promise for at least five or six years with absolutely no progress), so the kits of the barony had used the shed as a sort of play fort. Or at least, Judy had; none of her siblings had held any interest in imagining the thin and shabby walls of the shed to be the mighty Middle Wall that protected Zootopia and playing at guarding it. But even though her sisters especially preferred to play house, imagining the shed to be the manor of some ridiculously wealthy rabbit lord from the Inner Baronies, it had been Judy who had been the first to open the door to the shed that season.

She didn't think she'd ever forget the feeling that had come over her when she had opened the rickety wooden door and peered in. Her first sense had been of something being terribly _wrong_ in such a visceral way that nothing else had come close even years later. The familiar shapes of the tables and chairs had been deformed, softened and blurred by the ugly asymmetry of what everyone in the Tochtli Barony would later agree was the largest wasp nest anyone had ever seen. The feeling of wrongness had eventually resolved itself into a powerful sense of revulsion at the horrible way in which the familiar had been turned alien; even the peaceful quiet of the shed had been replaced by the harshly atonal buzzing of the wasps swarming over each other deep beneath the thin and rough skin of paper they had built.

Her first glimpse at what Phoenix had been built upon brought forth a nearly identical feeling; because the ground had been more or less level it hadn't been visible until she was right on top of it. She was standing near an enormous fissure in the earth, one so deep that it was impossible to say how far down it went but easily two or three hundred feet wide at the part closest to a collapsed portion of the Outer Wall and the scrublands beyond. It was clear that there had at some point been an enormous underground community, the fissure cracking open tunnels large enough for a giraffe to walk upright through and exposing enormous caves that could have swallowed her family home. Judy could see what looked like apartments and shops, but whatever had split the ground had also melted the exposed rock into unsettling patterns that reminded her of nothing more than that wasp nest. In some parts of the depths of the fissure, glowing dimly where the fading sunlight didn't reach, were the deformed remains of alchemical torches, their brightness faded to a nearly invisible and vaguely greenish glow over the countless centuries, the formerly perfectly formed lights twisted and distorted.

Puddles of what had once been solid rock, glistening translucently in some places and firmly opaque in others, had dripped over what had once been floors into amorphous stalagmites. Or rather, as Judy realized, what had once been _ceilings._ The way the very rock itself had run and dripped like hot wax had been only a large part of the reason Judy had made her mistake, but it was the force of habit more than anything else to assume that all mammals would build their homes the way that bunnies did, with floors below and ceilings above.

By contrast, the remains of the Quimichpatlan Barony treated ceilings and floors interchangeably. Judy could see the lumpy remains of what could have only been a stone table, with beautifully carved legs, hanging from the ceiling in one ruined apartment, while in another spot a shop held the ruins of a display stand melted into the floor. Judy realized that her jaw was hanging open but she couldn't do anything to help it; she had never imagined from what she had learned from her teachers that Quimichpatlan Barony had ever been so large and grand. Judy tried to imagine what it must have been like before it had been destroyed in the failed Second Uprising and couldn't; time had ruined the details that the intense heat of melting rock hadn't hundreds of years ago. Still, there were some signs of what must have been; one large cave was coated in tarnished silver that was thinnest at the tops of the walls and formed a puddle that dripped over the exposed edge and down into the depths of the fissure, whatever details had been on the wall ruined by it melting. Like the table in the apartment that had caught her attention, here and there some remaining bits of stonework had retained some of the detail they had been carved with, which to Judy's inexpert eye looked to be about the equal of anything she had seen while training in the very heart of the Inner Baronies.

The waterfall left plenty of gaps to see it all in, as it was less a continuous sheet and more many smaller falls no more than twenty feet wide or so, and it didn't come close to obscuring the massive fissure. The water did, however, have a somewhat oily-looking sheen to it that reminded Judy again of the contract Nick hoped to win; she found it very easy to believe that the water was in need of purification. "There are pumps way down there," Nick said, having appeared over Judy's shoulder while she was taking in the view, "Way, _way_ down there."

She couldn't help but notice that he didn't look down the fissure himself, instead looking her right in the eyes. "Not that anyone's seen them in centuries, of course," Nick said, "The lower dozen levels or so are supposed to be completely flooded."

Judy looked from Nick and then back down into the fissure. Even the point where the sunlight stopped reaching had to be three hundred feet below them, and if there were a dozen or more flooded levels even deeper... Although Judy wasn't afraid of either heights or swimming, she felt a touch of vertigo at the idea. "And are they?" Judy asked, "Do mammals go down there?"

Nick chuckled, shaking his head. "Not the smart ones. There are things down there worse than dirty water."

Judy turned her head sharply back in Nick's direction. "Like what?" she asked.

"Oh, you know, the usual things mammals say to scare kits. Ancient booby traps, half-mad mammals who got lost and couldn't find their way out, ghosts..." Nick said, ticking each off on one finger.

As he trailed off, he snapped his fingers suddenly. "And monsters, of course. Can't forget those."

Judy peered down into the depths of the ruins again as though some horrible beast might be staring back up at her. "Monsters?" she repeated.

Nick's tone had been half-teasing for all of the other supposed horrors he had named, but when he got to the last item, his words had seemed more serious than joking. "Monsters," Nick repeated, "Supposedly, the alchemists who destroyed Quimichpatlan Barony wanted to be sure there were no survivors, so they sent in chimeras."

His tone had continued to be surprisingly serious, but at the idea of chimeras being sent into the ruined barony Judy couldn't help but laugh; he was obviously just trying to scare her. "Chimeras like the princess?" Judy said, doing her very best to exude skepticism with every word; even with her limited knowledge of alchemy she knew that the first chimera had been born about forty years ago.

"Not like the princess, no," Nick said, shaking his head, "They weren't mammals."

He still seemed to be serious, and Judy pressed him on it. "Do you really believe those stories?" she asked.

"I've seen some of the things the mammals stupid enough to go down into the ruins bring back with them," Nick said, "Feathered snakes with wings... enormous lobsters with stingers..."

He shrugged. "You'll see things in the market that would make your tail puff out," he finished, and after shooting a sidelong glance at her tail added, "If it could, anyway."

Judy chuckled, a little uneasily; although Nick seemed to take the existence of monsters seriously enough, he didn't seem particularly worried about them. Considering that he apparently thought mammals who descended into the ruins were stupid, she would be entirely willing to bet that he had never gone into the depths himself. "You'll have to show me what's worth buying," Judy said, and Nick hooked his thumbs into his coat.

"Well, there is the book you're buying for me to start with," Nick said, "Otherwise..."

He stroked at his chin, apparently deep in thought, "I hear there's a fox alchemist who stops by Phoenix from time to time. He might have something worth buying when he sets up his stall. Quite the conversationalist, too, and all the vixens say he's very good-looking."

"Ah," Judy said, doing her best to hide a smile, "He sounds pretty remarkable."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

In chapter 1, there are some hints at what Judy remembers in this chapter, so far as Gideon clawing her in the face goes.

Real rabbits do in fact groom each other both as a sign of affection and a means of establishing a hierarchy within their group. I think there's plenty of evidence in the movie that the Hopps family is physically affectionate, and I'd imagine that grooming as means of apologizing and smoothing things over seemed appropriate as a typical bunny behavior. Foxes do groom each other as well, but considering Judy's lack of knowledge about foxes her concern about how Nick would take it are not unfounded.

Black eyes typically last about a week or so, although in a world where most everyone's face is covered with fur they probably become less obvious faster.

In chapter 8, I had noted that I refer to Nahuatl as the Old Tongue; in this chapter I'm referring to Latin as the Dead Tongue. Latin was last used as a primary language by around the 9th century CE; although Latin remained important as a language that many things were written in, it no longer had any native speakers and was used as a second language. Latin is, therefore, a dead language, and has been now for centuries. The romance languages, including Spanish, are derived from Latin, so considering the translation convention in effect it makes sense that Judy might see some words as looking somewhat familiar.

The cutting edge of the sabre is made of diamond, using alchemy to bond the carbon in the diamond to the carbon in the steel at the molecular level. This is something that would be essentially impossible to do with any known chemical techniques, but with the perfect control of matter that alchemy provides would be both possible and extraordinarily strong. Diamond can hold an incredibly sharp edge, but making an entire sword out of it would make it prone to shattering, so by having only the cutting surface be diamond it's making it a much better sword. The closest we can come with modern techniques is a diamond knife, which are frequently used in eye surgery due to their ability to hold such a sharp edge that it minimizes damage as it cuts, but the blades are extremely small and would make a poor weapon.

Quimichpatlan Barony takes its name from the Nahuatl word for bat; one of the things that occurred to me when I was setting up the background of this story was what the existence of blood magic might have interesting implications on animals that subsist on blood. There are, in fact, three species of vampire bat that subside exclusively on blood, with ranges that overlap that of modern-day Mexico, and I thought the idea of what it would mean for them to practice blood magic would be pretty interesting.

This barony is inspired by my idea of what a Nocturnal District would be like if Zootopia had one; locating it underground seems reasonable as a means of ensuring that it's dark. Of course, for a lot of the various districts mammals could simply live in the one that's appropriate for them and just go out at night, so I think if there is a Nocturnal District it could be a sort of microcosm of Zootopia, where it has a variety of climates and caters to naturally nocturnal mammals who want to be awake at the same time as diurnal mammals and diurnal mammals who want a taste of what the nocturnal life is like without having to stay up late.

The winged, feathered snakes that Nick claims lurk in the depths of the ruins of the Quimichpatlan Barony are a nod to Quetzalcoatl, whose name literally means "feathered serpent." In Aztec art, he's variously represented as both a human and as a snake with feathers.

The lobsters with stingers are a nod to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, where horrible creatures dubbed lobstrosities live on the beaches of the Western Sea and resemble enormous lobsters crossed with scorpions and are capable of producing something like speech.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought!


	14. Chapter 14

Although Bogo found the princess's process for drafting the statement he would deliver to the city's major newspapers particularly agonizing—so far as he knew, there was very little difference between the words "cowardly" and "cravenly" and which one was used to describe the would-be assassin didn't matter—it was obvious to him that the task of writing up the statement had given her something to focus on other than her own fear.

It was therefore for her sake that he quietly resigned himself to sitting through the drafting of the statement; the only point he had any firmness on was to voice his complete disapproval of the princess's idea to deliver the statement herself. From the weary way the queen had shaken her head, Bogo suspected that Princess Isabel had made a similar suggestion prior to his own arrival, but the very idea of royalty giving a statement personally was appalling. The Corazóns of the city could aggrandize themselves in the eyes of the newspapers all they liked, but for any member of the royal family to stoop to that level would be an enormous breach of the unwritten and unspoken rules of conduct for the heads of state. The general public, so far as Bogo was concerned, needed the comfort and stability of an unshakable monarch that could be looked to in times of trouble as a bastion of stability.

He was therefore quite thankful when the princess did not press the issue any further, appearing to keenly note the disapproval of both her mother and himself, and at last completed the statement that Bogo would make for the benefit of the morning editions. With the message safely tucked away into an inner pocket of his uniform jacket, Bogo was preparing to return to his office in the lower levels of the palace and catch up on anything that had transpired in his absence when the queen spoke. "Captain General, a word please?" she said, and then, glancing at her daughter who was watching raptly, added, "You ought to get to bed, dearest."

The princess obviously knew her mother well enough to know that, no matter how gentle the tone, it was an order and not a suggestion, and she dropped a stiff curtsy before heading out. The statement drafting had been done in the queen's personal library, which could not be mistaken for the libraries of any of the estates of the wealthiest nobles due to the floor's soft cover of grass it shared with the other rooms of the royal suites and its massive size. The rows upon rows of shelving, filled with a dizzying assortment of reading material—from texts engraved on pages of beaten gold thinner than any paper and still looking new despite being hundreds of years old to crumbling codices of āmatl—loomed over even Bogo, and the very weight of the history and knowledge of Zootopia seemed to bear down upon him as the queen waited for her daughter to close the door behind her.

When at last the princess was gone, Queen Lana finally spoke. "You believe you can trust the information the prisoner gave you?" she asked, and whether her voice was quiet because she was afraid the princess might try eavesdropping or because she was doing her best to contain herself Bogo could not quite guess.

He had anticipated something along the lines of her questioning, but before he could so much as form a word the queen added, looking him dead in the eye, "Although you only _asked_ him?"

There was no mistaking the anger in her voice for anything else, and Bogo answered bluntly. "A mammal will say anything to make torture stop," he said, and noticed that the insides of the queen's ears were reddening, although whether it was embarrassment or her anger reaching further heights he could not say.

She had never used the word torture in her instructions to him, but he saw by her reaction that it had most certainly been her intent. The queen raised one hoof, her eyes flashing, and for a brief moment Bogo thought that he might be joining Alfonso in the dungeons before she slumped back into her chair, her normally impeccable posture suddenly completely gone. "You're right," she said, and Bogo couldn't hear any anger in her voice, "I was..."

"Concerned for your daughter, your majesty," Bogo said.

The queen sighed, and waved one hoof to take in the library. "All of these books around us, you'd think I would have learned something," she said, "Did you ever learn what happened to King Oveja IV's daughter Eleanor?"

"No, your majesty," Bogo answered, after a brief attempt to cudgel his memory for a detail about something that had happened centuries ago and that he might have learned decades ago proved completely fruitless.

"She was the youngest child," the queen said slowly, "One who would never inherit the throne, of course, but still a princess. One day, she fell into a lake and drowned; she was only six and had never learned to swim. She had always been King Oveja IV's favorite, and eventually his grief turned to madness, seeing a tragic accident as a plot for the throne."

The queen paused a moment, seeming to look through Bogo as she continued her recitation. "He had his own brother tortured until he confessed to everything, naming co-conspirators at the very highest levels of nobility. The mad king had them all arrested and tortured in turn, until the ones who had been spared saw what the king no longer could. Do you know what they saw?"

The queen was, Bogo realized, turning the very same technique she used for teaching the princess on to him, but even though he couldn't remember learning about Princess Eleanor he knew there was only one thing that could have happened. "None of the stories matched," he said, and the queen nodded.

"They were..." the queen began, and after briefly trailing off she added, "Saying anything to make the torture stop."

She gave him a surprisingly rueful smile; protocol might prevent her from offering an apology to a commoner, even if he was the captain general of the City Guard, but Bogo understood her meaning well enough and he gave her a small nod. "King Oveja IV chose to abdicate the throne to his brother, if you believe he ever had a choice, and lived out his days in a private suite, if you believe it was a suite," the queen said, and Bogo knew what she meant.

The royal family ruled only with the support of the nobility, and the mad king must have pushed them dangerously close to civil war. Whether the choice to abdicate had been given to him at the end of a sword or not, the implication must have been obvious, and whether history called where he had lived the rest of his life a cell or a suite he almost certainly hadn't been permitted to leave. The thoughts of what might happen to her and her daughter had obviously occurred to the queen, and whatever bland words the historians would eventually choose to use to describe the events they were living through wouldn't change the reality of those events. "I would ask you not to let me stray again," the queen said, and Bogo bowed low.

"Of course, your majesty," he said.

* * *

Back in his office, Bogo pushed the conversation aside as he shuffled through the reports that he had been provided. His officers still hadn't managed to find the weasel who practiced a dubious form of blood magic, and it was still too early to expect the bear from the Middle Baronies to have been brought in, let alone to hear back from Phoenix about the wolf and the tiger. His stack of papers did, however, have a report from an expert alchemist about Jorge de Cuvier's torc, and Bogo frowned. He had completely forgotten to request it and found himself grateful for the foresight of his officers. Their attention where his own had failed, however, didn't amount to anything. The pattern engraved into Cuvier's torc had been altered in a peculiar and seemingly crude way, which the alchemist who wrote the report claimed to have never seen before. The alchemist, however, had been one of the physically larger court alchemists who reported to the pompous little mouse who had treated Bogo's injury, and Bogo grunted as he cast the report aside.

Any of the coroners who worked with the average citizens of Zootopia could have likely told the alchemist that mammals attempting to alter their torcs were hardly uncommon; the stupider thieves and would-be murderers thought that by scratching more symbols into their torcs they could avoid instant retribution for injuries they inflicted. The luckier of those mammals gave themselves severe burns to their necks and the less lucky simply died; Bogo had never heard of anyone successfully altering a torc. Jorge de Cuvier had likely tried, perhaps being too foolish to realize that whoever had put him up to the task of assassinating the princess had no expectation for him to survive the attempt, but he had obviously failed from the way he had suffered an injury identical to Bogo.

Tomas hadn't commented on it at the time he had examined Cuvier's body, but for all his ego the mouse was extremely knowledgeable about torcs and had certainly come to the same conclusion that years on the streets of Zootopia had helped Bogo make. It did help paint a better picture of the sort of mammal Cuvier must have been; any mammal who believed that torcs could be altered couldn't be all that bright. Bogo rubbed absently at the spot on his shoulder where Cuvier had stabbed him, which had absolutely no lingering pain, and began the slow and tedious task of reading through guard logs.

All of the guards in the palace were required to maintain logs for each and every one of their shifts, and Bogo hoped to try to figure out the route Cuvier had taken into the council room. Perhaps he had taken an unknown secret passage, as Cencerro had suggested, but if there was some sort of gap in the patrol routes he had set up in the palace Bogo wanted to find it right away. Although the palace was, at the moment, under greatly increased guard, it was far from a viable long-term solution. It would take months, at the very least, for him to have any kind of trust in the private soldiers that Cerdo and Cencerro (and, most likely sooner rather than later, Corazón as well) had given over to the City Guard, and extra protection at the palace meant less of it elsewhere. In Bogo's experience, the simple presence of uniformed members of the City Guard on the street was a powerful deterrent for petty crimes, and lacking that deterrent crime would likely spike.

Perhaps back to normal levels, Bogo mused, still feeling a nagging suspicion about the falling crime rates the council had been discussing immediately before the assassination attempt. It was more than possible that someone had consolidated power after Alfonso's arrest, but if there was a new gang of criminals, even one made from the broken remnants of Alfonso's, Bogo had heard no word of it. Bogo sighed, shaking his head as he went back to the interminable logs, trying to avoid chasing down the distracting thoughts that led him to anywhere but his current task.

In the end, after a few hours of careful study and comparison to floor plans of the palace, Bogo came to two very important conclusions. The first was that even accounting for the incredible speed the llama could run at, it just wasn't possible for Cuvier to have made it to the council room without being spotted unless he had one or more guards who had assisted him or had used a secret passageway Bogo didn't know of. The second, which Bogo arrived at as he stood up from his oversized desk and stretched, feeling his back pop satisfyingly as he did so, was that he really needed to sleep. He had already dispatched a message to his wife, hours ago, that he would not be back to the home they shared at his usual time, and Bogo considered whether he had the time to go back at all. His office did have, concealed behind a tapestry that depicted the seal of the City Guard, a small personal room with a cot and a bathroom that were both ever so slightly too small to be entirely comfortable to use. His position as head of the City Guard did not, unfortunately, come with a personal residence, and even on his fairly generous salary he couldn't afford an estate close to the palace. The idea of traveling nearly forty minutes to get to his own bed was made more appealing by the thought of sleeping next to Maria, but he still had to give his statement to the newspapers and had already summoned them to the palace.

Just as Bogo was about to resign himself to a night spent on the uncomfortable cot following an encounter with the mammals from the newspapers that was likely to be nearly as uncomfortable, there was a sudden and vigorous knock on his door. "Captain General!" came a voice he had not expected at all to hear; it was Cencerro.

"Captain General, are you in there?" she asked, and Bogo could hear the excitement in her voice.

"Yes," Bogo called back, and while he started walking towards his door he let one hoof ease itself onto the grip of the macuahuitl he still wore at his waist.

He didn't think Cencerro would be so foolish as to have him attacked in his office if she was behind the attempt on the princess's life, but it seemed unwise to discount the possibility when she was acting in such a manner.

"Good, good," Cencerro said, and her cheerfulness was almost alarming; Bogo had never heard the ewe so happy.

"My mammals found who let the assassin in," she continued, and if anything she suddenly no longer seemed cheerful enough; if she was right it was the sort of victory over Cerdo and Corazón that the pig and the lion would never be able to match or exceed.

Bogo relaxed his grip on his macuahuitl and unlatched his door, taking in the extraordinary sight before him. Cencerro was standing to one side of the doorway, looking especially pleased with herself, and on the other side were two burly rams, both dressed in the livery of Cencerro's holding, on either side of a jaguar Bogo recognized perfectly well. "Jamie?" he asked, and if his disbelief was obvious it didn't matter.

Jamie of the Tecuani Barony wasn't just one of Bogo's most trusted captains; he was the prince consort's significantly younger brother. Unlike his deceased older brother, Jamie had a tawny coat of rosettes as most jaguars did, but his eyes were precisely the same shade of yellow. Sometimes Bogo had seen the ghost of the prince consort in Jamie, from the way he walked to the way he spoke, little reminders of how similar the two brothers had been. It was his eyes that had been the most frequent reminder, but as the jaguar glared at him Bogo found them completely unfamiliar. Never before, either on Fernando's face or on Jamie's, had he ever seen such naked hatred and loathing. "Of course I am," he all but spat, and the two rams on either side of him tightened their grips on his arms, "Had to have Cencerro figure it out, did you?"

Bogo found himself speechless in a way he couldn't understand. It made no possible sense; Jamie had absolutely nothing to gain from the princess's death, as he certainly wasn't in the line of succession to the throne, but there was no denying that the jaguar was acting incredibly guilty. "You're losing your touch," Jamie taunted, and once more Bogo saw nothing of the jaguar he had thought he had known.

The words stung more than they should have, as though the jaguar had looked into his heart and seen his own secret fears that he was beginning to get too old and too comfortable in his position to be effective anymore. Jamie himself had been one of those rare cadets that had given Bogo hope for the city-state after he retired or died; Jamie had joined the City Guard shortly after his brother's death and his rise through the ranks had been so meteoric that Bogo had fully expected him to make captain general someday. "Why?" Bogo asked, and it took him a moment to realize he had spoken the word aloud.

"That little half-blood _freak_ got my brother killed," Jamie said, and while he couldn't move his arms to gesture towards the royal suites many stories above their heads he still jerked his chin upwards, his ears flat against his skull.

Members of the normal City Guard, apparently alerted by the commotion of Cencerro and her soldiers, had shown up, and seemingly automatically Bogo directed them to take Jamie into custody, all the while unable to believe he hadn't seen it coming. Had he really been so distracted by the petty political bickering of the queen's advisers that he hadn't seen his protege's treachery coming? He had thought that both he and Jamie saw Princess Isabel as the last remaining part of the prince consort. Bogo, so much as he could while leading the City Guard, had taken an almost fatherly pride in how the princess grew and developed as she turned into a worthy heir, and he had thought that Jamie would have taken a similar pride in his niece.

But he had missed Jamie's true feelings so completely that he had endangered the princess; if the queen stripped him of his rank for his failure he would make no protest. He would have to—"Captain General?" Cencerro's voice came, interrupting his thoughts, "Captain General, did you hear me?"

"No, I—" Bogo began, and Cencerro smoothly cut him off, beaming up at him.

"I said, we ought to report this to the queen."

"Yes, of course," Bogo said, and his voice sounded feeble and foolish to his own ears.

As he followed Cencerro up the flight of stairs that led to the royal suites it occurred to Bogo that he had never felt older or weaker.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

The earliest newspapers developed in about the 17th century in our world, due to the confluence of relatively widespread literacy and the printing press making it economical to produce and buy disposable printed material. However, early newspapers, and indeed even newspapers up until relatively recently, tended to be heavily censored by governments. Sweden was the first country to formalize the freedom of the press, doing so in 1766.

Many heads of governments, or their courts, saw speaking directly to the press as being beneath their dignity; in the US, for example, it was Woodrow Wilson who first held a press conference in office, and what transcripts exist from those meetings suggest that he expected a fair amount of deference from the reporters.

I therefore thought that it was pretty plausible that Bogo would be mildly appalled at the idea of the princess speaking to a reporter directly and would find it perfectly normal for the government to directly give a statement to the press and expect it to be included, without editing, by the city's newspapers.

Although Bogo dismisses it as unimportant, there is a slight difference between the words "cowardly" and "cravenly;" the word "cravenly" can suggest a lack of resistance. The subtle nuances between words, even ones that are largely synonymous, is a part of press releases that can be particularly tricky, as the overall goal is to communicate the intended message to the intended audience.

The distinction between morning and evening papers is an interesting one that our modern world largely lacks, the immediacy of television, radio, and the Internet having mostly supplanted print media, but in the days before those alternatives most major newspapers printed multiple editions a day. The morning editions of the newspapers were largely considered more respectable than evening editions (which included a number of somewhat tawdry papers intended for people returning home from work); it was for this reason that the physician of King George V, in 1936, deliberately gave him a lethal overdose of anesthetic to ensure that the king's death would be reported in the morning press rather than the evening papers as it would have been if the king had held onto life longer.

Making a book with golden pages would certainly be possible, if you could afford to spend the gold to do so. As previously mentioned, gold can be beaten to extraordinary thinness, and if you're writing one-sided you could etch it. As gold is naturally extremely corrosion resistant, it'd be a good material for making something intended to last; this is, for example, why the Voyager Golden Records were gold-plated. In theory, any alien civilization that finds _Voyager 1_ or _Voyager 2_ would be able to play back the record, assuming they can understand the instructions engraved on the cover.

The word āmatl is the Nahuatl word for a kind of paper made out of bark, and was widely used in the part of the world that is now Mexico before the conquering Spaniards banned its production. Now known as amate, it is still produced by local artisans, and it's more similar to papyrus than to Western style paper.

Tomas, the mouse who treated Bogo's injured shoulder in chapter 4, gets mentioned again here; I figure that the field of alchemy is sufficiently broad that it's not unreasonable for him to have a number of alchemists reporting to him.

Jaime of the Tecuani Barony also first showed up in chapter 4, although his relationship to the royal family wasn't mentioned at that time.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought if you're so inclined to leave a comment.


	15. Chapter 15

As she and Nick got closer to the entrance to Phoenix, Judy couldn't help but wrinkle her nose at the smell coming off the waterfalls that flowed into the fissure. It was like an awful combination of a swamp and a privy, the sickly smell of decay mixed with that of much fresher waste. Trying to keep her disgust off her face, as Nick seemed to be doing despite his doubtlessly more sensitive nose, Judy tried turning her attention to the layout of Phoenix itself.

Phoenix, she saw, was entirely on a roughly triangular patch of ground; the unimaginable alchemy had cracked Quimichpatlan Barony open had created an enormous Y-shaped fissure that the settlement was nestled in. Although the Outer Wall had partially collapsed around Phoenix, what remained still provided it with a great deal of protection. Indeed, although Judy could see that the arms of the fissure extended into the scrub lands beyond the wall, it was still impassible; any invader would have had to cross the incredibly deep chasm. The part of the wall that Phoenix ended against looked to be completely intact, although with some obvious signs of repair, so if there was a way in or out of the settlement beyond the wide bridge they were walking on Judy didn't see it.

Nick, for his part, didn't seem to be bothered by walking on the bridge that connected the three arms of the fissure, but considering that the bridge had to be at least fifty feet wide Judy supposed that he couldn't see off the edge of it any more than she could. As they got closer, Judy could hear all the signs of a prosperous and bustling town, from the clip-clop of hooves against smooth stone streets and the associated creaking and groaning of carriages to the cries of peddlers selling their wares and the screeches of messenger hawks. After even so brief a trip with only Nick for company, it was a welcome return to the feeling that she had gotten when she had first set foot in Zootopia's city center. It was a feeling of being a part of something, of being a small but no less important part of what was possible when mammals worked together.

As they approached the pair of guards who stood on either side of the gateway to Phoenix, which was a drab affair of the same rough white stone blocks that looked to have been salvaged from the parts of the Outer Wall that had collapsed as all the buildings she could see, Judy couldn't help but appreciate seeing fellow members of the City Guard. The pair, a bear and an auroch, seemed more involved in a low conversation they were having with each other than in keeping an eye on mammals approaching, and both wore the rank insignia of a first corporal on their torcs. At seeing mammals wearing torcs again, Judy couldn't help but shoot a glance in Nick's direction, but at some point she hadn't noticed he had put his oddly plain and unadorned bronze torc back on as though it had never come off. Even his expression had shifted into a politely neutral mask, but neither guard seemed to pay them much attention, the auroch simply impatiently gesturing them on with his spear.

As she walked past, Judy caught a snippet of their conversation, not that it made any sense to her.

"—out here, though?" the bear whispered.

"That's what I heard," the auroch said, just as quietly, and though Judy felt a pang of curiosity she kept walking on.

Her assignment didn't officially end until she reported into the local barracks and presented Nick to the commander, but as she stepped past the gateway it occurred to her that she should have asked the guards where the barracks were. The wedge-shaped design of Phoenix seemed to be split by a number of angled streets between buildings that quickly turned and had the sight lines blocked by more buildings. Judy glanced around, trying to find the familiar design of a City Guard barracks, but she saw nothing, just a dizzying array of mammals making their way along the streets, alchemical torches burning brightly from lampposts to banish the coming night. She narrowly stepped out of the way of a horse-drawn carriage clattering past, both the horse pulling the carriage and the passenger calling out for her to watch her step, and nearly stumbled over a loose bit of pavement into a street vendor selling what appeared to be dried pieces of fish on sticks.

"If you keep spinning like that, your head'll come off," Nick said cheerfully, grabbing Judy by the elbow as he waved apologetically at the wolf selling the dubious-looking food, "You don't know where the City Guard barracks are, do you?"

"Well, no," Judy admitted, and Nick chuckled.

"Come on, then, I know the way," Nick said, and despite his heavy-looking pack he managed to make smoothly maneuvering between a passing porcupine couple look effortless.

Judy quickly caught up with him; he had set off for one of the many side streets with an obvious sense of purpose, and Judy didn't doubt that he knew exactly where he was going. "Is there anything you _don't_ know?" Judy asked, only half-teasing, and Nick smiled enigmatically.

"Oh, not much," he said, rather immodestly, "Only the things _worth_ knowing."

Their walk to the barracks took only a few minutes, and Judy tried to remember all of the twists and turns it took to get there from the main gate; it seemed almost as though Phoenix had been deliberately designed as a bewildering labyrinth, although all of the mammals they passed seemed to move with a similar sense of purpose as Nick. At last, though, they were standing in front of a building that Judy would have recognized anywhere; it seemed as though every barracks she had ever seen shared the same long, squat, and windowless design, the little details that were different all but insignificant. The Phoenix barracks seemed to be built of blocks a bit more rough-hewn than the guardhouse outside the gate through the Middle Wall, but otherwise it looked virtually identical.

Unlike that guardhouse, it did have neighboring buildings, all of which put the barracks to shame; on one side a rug-maker had put out brilliantly colored examples of their intricate work that stood out dramatically from the drab white stone, and on the other was a tavern from which Judy could hear the near-manic conversations and laughter of mammals having a good time.

The Phoenix City Guard barracks were just as austere inside as they were outside; although the floor plan was perfectly recognizable even to Judy's relatively inexperienced eye, there weren't any of the personalized touches most guard commanders allowed at the desks. There were no family portraits or sculptures or even banners for a favored ōllamaliztli or football team. There were files at each desk, but they were all so neatly organized that there didn't seem to be so much as a page out of place. Although the almost aggressively neat building was almost certainly explained by the preference of the commanding officer of the barracks, Judy realized that there was something rather odd about the barracks. There wasn't so much as a single officer, commissioned or not, that she could see.

Nick, who had come in a step behind Judy, frowned as he joined her in looking around. "It's never _this_ empty," he said, and Judy nodded her agreement.

It was downright eerie to see a barracks completely abandoned, especially one that was so neat; it gave off no sign of having ever been inhabited, as though a freshly built barracks had been dropped from the sky and never used. Just as Judy was about to ask Nick if he had somehow guided them to a barracks that hadn't opened yet, she heard the click of hooves against the polished stone floor coming from what would be the commanding officer's private office if the floor plan was entirely as she imagined it to be. A few seconds later Judy saw Nick's ears twitch in the direction of the sound a moment before a sheep in the uniform of a lieutenant colonel.

"Enisgn... Tochtli, is it?" the barracks commander said, "Sign here. You can spend the next two night in the officer's quarters. There's a convoy heading back to the city center you'll leave with."

The sheep's voice was just as cold and unemotional as the barracks he commanded, and he thrust a clipboard with a sheet of paper on in towards Judy as he spoke, barely giving her the chance to salute. Each word was clipped and precise, as was his uniform. The quilted red fabric of his tunic showed sharp and seemingly geometrically perfect creases, and the insignia attached to either side of his torc caught the brilliant light of the alchemical torches in the room and were completely free of smudges or lint. His silver breastplate didn't show so much as a whorl from being polished, as though it had been made immediately before he put it on. Even the feathers at his wrist, which Judy knew from experience to be frustratingly difficult to keep in order, were aligned so precisely that they almost didn't seem real.

The ram himself was completely overshadowed by his uniform; his wool had been neatly sheared so short that his rosily pink skin was visible and his features were entirely unremarkable. He was of average height for a sheep, with a build that made it obvious he had not neglected his daily training, and the overall effect was that he almost looked like an illustration out of the City Guard's uniform regulations. "Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro, how nice to see you again!" Nick said, first spreading his paws out in welcome.

Cencerro—and although Judy had never met Lady Alba Cencerro she would be willing to bet the two mammals were related somehow—inclined his head a fraction of an inch in Nick's direction before turning his attention back to Judy, standing stiffly as he waited for her to fill out the form he had given her. The paperwork was straightforward and to the point; it was a simple acknowledgement that she had completed her assignment and Judy quickly finished signing it. As Cencerro took the clipboard back, Judy found the completion of her first official assignment as a member of the City Guard strangely anticlimatic. She certainly hadn't expected the barracks commander to congratulate her for completing so simple a task, but she had held out some kind of hope that he would at least acknowledge she had made it a quick trip.

Instead, he seemed to be completely done with her, not even giving her either a make-work job or especially hated task the way Judy had heard some barracks commanders did for visiting members of the City Guard. Certainly she didn't _want_ to clean the street outside the barracks with nothing but a toothbrush or re-organize several years of old files, but considering how empty the Phoenix barracks were Judy found it bizarre Cencerro hadn't even mentioned assigning her to keep watch. "Sir," Judy said as Cencerro began to turn around to go the way he had come, "Is there something going on?"

She gestured around the empty office area. "I don't know if you saw it in my file, but I was at the top of—" Judy began, but Cencerro interrupted, his tone just as bland as before.

"Nothing that requires your attention, Ensign," the ram said, "The Phoenix City Guard has it under control."

"Has _what_ under control?" Judy asked, and then hastily added, "Sir?"

Cencerro's mouth, which had previously been nothing more than a narrow slash across his face, thinned further. "Nothing that requires your attention, Ensign," he repeated, "You don't know this town. You would only waste time."

"Oh, I wouldn't mind guiding her around," Nick interjected cheerfully, "It's too late to bother setting up a booth in the market anyway."

Judy suspected that Nick was just as curious about what could possibly empty out the barracks as she was, and whether he was genuinely interested in helping or simply trying to curry favor she appreciated the offer. "It's not a matter for a civilian, Nicholas," Cencerro said rather stiffly as his eyes narrowed, "You should leave."

There was a long moment, in which the ram simply stared at the fox, and then Nick shrugged. "Always a pleasure, lieutenant colonel," he said, and it was a testament to Nick that he made the words sound almost genuine.

Nick shot a questioning look at Judy as he wordlessly asked her if she would be leaving with him, but Cencerro spoke before she could respond in any way. "Come to my office, Ensign," Cencerro said, which only made Judy more curious as to what was going on; it was very odd for him to first claim not to have anything for her to do and then want to speak with her alone.

Nick clapped his paws together. "Well, I hope the two of you have a good talk but I really ought to go," he said, as though Cencerro had not just bluntly told him to leave; the fox seemed to have a real talent for simply ignoring awkward situations as though they had gone the way he wanted them to.

He turned to leave, but he took his time walking out. "I'll have a booth in the market the next few days before I put my bid in," Nick murmured on his way past Judy, "It's in the biggest square in town, you can't miss it."

Judy nodded slightly to show she had heard him, and then, just like that, he was gone. The door clicked shut behind him with what struck Judy as a grim finality, and she had plenty of time to mull it over as she followed Cencerro back to his office. It had just as little personality as the rest of the building; were it not for the name—LT. COL. D. CENCERRO—carved into the wall beside the door and the neat stack of files on the modest desk, it would have looked as though it had never been used.

"I apologize, Ensign," Cencerro said as he took his chair and gestured for Judy to take the one opposite him, "But it's not a matter we can speak about in front of a _fox_."

For the first time since she had met the lieutenant colonel, Judy heard what sounded like genuine emotion in his voice; his distaste for Nick was obvious. "Especially one that's stolen the secrets of alchemy," Cencerro added, "Did he tell you why he's _really_ here?"

"Sir?" Judy said, not entirely sure what the ram was getting at, but Cencerro smiled sourly and Judy was surprised at how much more animated he appeared without Nick present.

It seemed as though he didn't just hold distaste for Nick but genuinely loathed him, as though his stiffness had simply been his way of holding his emotions in check, his words not nearly as clipped as they had been. "He's not just here to bid on a public works project, I can tell you that," Cencerro said, "He's always skulking about here, has been for years. Completely untrustworthy, just like every fox. And now with what happened at the palace... If you have any idea what he's up to I want to know."

Judy's mind flew instantly to the book she had promised to buy for Nick, but it was absurd to think that he would have gone to such efforts when there surely had to be a dozen different ways he could get his paws on it if he really wanted to. Just because he was a fox and an alchemist didn't mean that he had some ulterior motive; if she, as a bunny, could become a soldier because she wanted to keep the city safe and help make it better, Judy saw no reason a fox couldn't want to become an alchemist for a noble reason. Not that he had ever said _why_ or really even _how_ he managed to master the notoriously difficult and secretive form of magic, but Judy had no small amount of faith in him. He was, so far as she could tell, a good fox, no matter what Cencerro thought. "Nothing he's mentioned, sir," Judy said at last, "But what happened at the palace?"

Judy was just as interested in getting Cencerro's attention away from Nick as to what could have possibly happened at the palace, and from the gloomy way the ram sighed she knew it couldn't be anything good. "I didn't want that fox spreading rumors, but you were right to ask why the barracks are so empty," he said, pulling a folded envelope from within one of the files on his desk.

Although Judy had never sent a letter by messenger hawk—she had never known anyone who it would be practical to send such a letter to—she had received exactly one such letter before and she recognized the envelope as being identical to the one her acceptance letter to the academy had arrived in. Or rather, nearly identical. While the envelope she had received had been sealed with red wax, the alchemical symbols etched into it burning white to show it hadn't been tampered with, the envelope Cencerro showed her had the remains of a purple wax seal. Although the alchemical symbols no longer glowed, the seal having already been broken, Judy recognized that the seal wasn't just the symbol of the City Guard; it had been sent from the desk of Captain General Bogo himself. "An assassin slipped into the palace and nearly killed the princess," Cencerro said, pulling the letter out of its envelope although he did not show it to her.

"Is she all right?" Judy asked once she could manage to articulate a thought, "How?"

The lieutenant colonel held up one hoof, forestalling her questions no matter how badly she wanted to demand answers. "She's fine, but there are some leads on how the assassin might have managed to slip in. Leads that trace back here, to Phoenix. I've got every soldier I can spare trying to run down some blood magicians, and now you show up."

"Sir, if there's anything I can do to help—" Judy began, but he cut her off.

"It's an interesting coincidence, wouldn't you say?" Cencerro mused, stroking at his chin with the hoof that wasn't holding the letter.

"Sir?" Judy asked, but she had a sinking feeling she already knew what Cencerro was thinking.

"An assassin using powerful quauhxicallis tries killing the princess, quauhxicallis that might have been made here in Phoenix. And the very same day the news gets to us, so does a fox alchemist."

"Sir, I don't think he would do that," Judy said, trying to pick her words as carefully as possible, "I don't think—"

"Ensign Tochtli," Cencerro interrupted, "You've known him for all of two days. Surely you realize criminals can lie, don't you?"

"I—" Judy began, but she couldn't finish the thought.

Had Nick spent their entire trip together tricking her? She didn't want to believe it; surely Cencerro was just grasping at straws, allowing his dislike for Nick to let him envision the fox as a part of an awful conspiracy. But there was no denying that Nick was an odd mammal, from being an alchemist despite also being a predator to his carefree attitude towards his torc. "You understand," Cencerro said, seeming to take her hesitation for agreement, "I have a special assignment for you for the next few days, Ensign. I want you to figure out what that fox is up to."

He looked at Judy expectantly, and all she could do was nod, hoping the conflict roiling in her mind wasn't visible on her face.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Up until this chapter, all of the members of the City Guard who have shown up have been officers, with this chapter marking the first appearance of enlisted soldiers. I figure it's one of the little things that distinguishes the main part of the city with a settlement at its literal edge; it's simply neither a prestigious assignment or one that makes the soldiers particularly noticeable to the higher ups. First corporal is a fairly low rank, but technically speaking as a commissioned officer, even at the lowest possible rank, Judy outranks all non-commissioned officers. However, it's a very foolish ensign who tries pulling rank on senior enlisted personnel.

An auroch is a now-extinct species of cattle that was the ancestor of modern domesticated cattle, which went extinct in the real-world sometime around the mid-17th century.

The game ōllamaliztli is a real Aztec sport, sometimes known now as the Aztec ballgame, is poorly understood in the modern era. There were likely several different but similar games, or the rules may have changed over time, but there are plenty of surviving ball courts that attest to its popularity. Football is, of course, association football, or soccer, which has a history that traces back centuries (or possibly even longer). Professional sports are a relatively modern concept for the games that are currently played, with most dating to the late 19th or early 20th century, but the concept of professional athletes is not. At the highest levels, ancient gladiators were very well paid and even endorsed products the way modern athletes do, and Aztec games seem to have had a ritualistic element to them that I think could have plausibly evolved into something like a modern sport league.

One of the major reasons that letters used to be sealed with wax was to show that they hadn't been tampered with. Generally, you have to break the seal to open it, which is a useful way of showing if someone's been reading your mail. I figured that it made sense, considering the near-ubiquitous appearance of alchemy in this story, that they would use similar anti-tampering methods to what was mentioned on the coins as an anti-counterfeiting measure back in chapter 5.

The two story lines in this story aren't exactly happening concurrently; the chapters from Bogo's perspective covered a significantly shorter amount of time, and this chapter demonstrates that the chapters didn't start in synch either. Hopefully the way I wrote it makes it clear enough, but as always I'm interested in hearing what people think if they're so inclined to leave a comment. Thanks for reading, and if you celebrate it I hope you have a very Merry Christmas!


	16. Chapter 16

Cencerro was all but skipping up the stairs that led to the royal suites in a manner more befitting a lamb than one of the queen's chief advisers, but as Bogo followed along behind her simply trudging up the interminable staircase was the best that he could manage. Why hadn't he seen Jamie's betrayal coming? The question consumed him, and the worst part was that as they made their way up floor after luxurious floor an answer came to him.

It had been weeks, maybe months, since he had really had any sort of conversation with Jamie. It had started off reasonably enough; after Jamie had taken up his post in the palace Bogo hadn't wanted to give the impression of favoritism, and he had kept a conscious and deliberate distance. But it wasn't just the distance he had kept from the jaguar that had cost him the opportunity to notice any sign that he had harbored a murderous loathing for the princess. It was... Bogo prevented himself from heaving a sigh, no matter how unlikely it was that Cencerro would notice with how distracted she seemed by her victory. It was as though he simply hadn't given the jaguar any thought for weeks.

Bogo could have blamed the endless distractions of his job, from overseeing the security on yet another round of renovations to the palace and its grounds to Alfonso's arrest (which at the time had been a _welcome_ distraction from the day-to-day dealings of the palace), but the simple truth was that he should have done more. When the prince consort had died, he had spent more time than was necessary to fulfill the obligations of his job with the grieving family, and that had included Jamie. He had been proud of the young jaguar when he had joined the academy, and even more so when he had graduated at the top of his class. Bogo had followed each and every one of Jamie's career milestones, always impressed by his skill and devotion to duty. Looking back on it now, though, what had he missed? Had the jaguar already been plotting to murder the princess years ago when he had joined the City Guard? Or had it come later? Surely the tipping point must have been at or before he had been posted to the palace, but how much time and effort had Jamie put into his plan?

Bogo knew he _could_ have noticed it, if only he had been paying closer attention. If only he had still been in his prime. When he had been younger he had prided himself on his instinct for trouble; by the time he had made lieutenant he had earned a reputation for spotting criminals before they acted. But those days of walking the streets felt as though they had been eons ago, and he felt as though the focus and attention he had once had were long-since dulled and blunted. He had learned to manage mammals and paperwork, even to extinguish the worst of the temper that had nearly gotten him kicked out of the academy, but he had lost something in the process. Despite himself, Bogo's lips twitched in the ghost of a smile, remembering the time he had challenged a fellow cadet—Raoul Llanuras, the largest and meanest elephant he had ever met—to a fistfight over some slight he couldn't recall. The fight had lasted all of three seconds, not that he could—Bogo shook his head slightly, banishing the memory.

His attention was the other problem, the one he hadn't admitted to anyone. Maybe he was just growing old and sentimental the way his own grandmother had, and not feeble and senile the way his grandfather had, but he couldn't deny to himself that his focus wasn't what it had once been. Jamie had been important to him, once, not quite like a son but perhaps like a nephew, and he had let their relationship simply drift away like a balloon on a windy day. And for what? Lengthy files and reports no one would read, meetings that no one would remember, and security decisions that had done nothing to keep the princess safe. He had failed, and honor demanded that he submit himself to whatever punishment the queen saw fit to order.

It was on that gloomy thought that, for the second time that day, Bogo found himself in front of the massive gilded doors to the royal apartments. As though the gods themselves had taken an interest in making his day as bad as possible, the two mammals Bogo wanted to see least—Cerdo and Corazón—were already there, apparently awkwardly waiting. To Bogo's eye, Cerdo looked mildly interested, the pig's thick brow wrinkled slightly, but Corazón looked as though he was bursting with nervous energy in a way unlike anything Bogo had ever seen him show. The lion's seemingly perpetual charming expression was completely gone, a frown tugging at his lips as he paced back and forth. "Captain General, Lady Cencerro," Corazón said, and Bogo thought he even heard a slightly anxious note in his voice, "What's going on?"

"My soldiers caught the mammal behind the awful attack on the princess," Cencerro said before Bogo could even think of how he would have answered the question, and her voice was very nearly sweet as syrup.

When Corazón was surprised, Bogo thought, he didn't look particularly charming or powerful; the lion's shock was plainly evident, his chin suddenly seeming weak. "You've caught?" he began, his voice uncertainly turning it into a question, but Cerdo quickly interrupted.

"Then I think congratulations are in order," Cerdo beamed; the pig had apparently recovered from his own surprise much more quickly than Corazón, and true to his words he extended one hoof to Cencerro to shake.

"I'm sure the queen will be quite pleased," Cerdo continued, his generous gut wobbling as he firmly shook Cencerro's hoof, "Who was it?"

"I'll explain everything to the queen," Cencerro said, "I'm sure she won't mind either of you being there too."

Bogo thought he caught a flicker of annoyance run across Corazón's face; the lion wasn't stupid and was clearly perfectly aware that he was being patronized. Cencerro was clearly enjoying every minute of her triumph, and Bogo suspected that she even savored the sharp nod she gave the guards outside the door. The two guards went through the ritual of announcing the visitors, and the great golden doors swung open noiselessly on their massive hinges. It was all perfectly mundane, a ritual that Bogo had been through countless times, which made what happened next have the casual impossibility of a nightmare.

The guard on the left of the door, a tall black wolf, suddenly clutched at his throat with a horrible gurgling cough, his fingers sliding around the elaborately ornamented hilt of a dagger that had simply appeared there. Bogo's reaction was automatic, one hoof going for the macuahuitl at his waist, but before his fingers had even closed around the hilt the guard on the right side of the door cried out as well as she collapsed.

It even _felt_ like a nightmare as Bogo spun around, time seeming to stretch out even more than it had when he had taken the colibri quauhxicalli. His arm and weapon seemed impossibly slow and heavy, and Bogo expected to feel a thrown knife in his neck before he even had a chance to see who had killed the guards. There was only one mammal it could be, though, and when Bogo completed his turn, his macuahuitl drawn, he saw he was right.

Jamie was a terrible sight to behold as he raced up the stairs with the same impossible speed as Jorge de Cuvier, moving so fast that Bogo more caught impressions of his appearance than really saw him. The jaguar's tawny fur was stained and clumped with blood that didn't look to be his own. His uniform was torn in places, his polished breastplate with its delicate engravings and his feathered bracelets gone, but the tendons of his arms and neck bulged grotesquely as if stretched by some unseen force. His lips were peeled back from his muzzle in a horrible grimace, his fangs fully visible, and there was nothing but hate visible in his eyes. His torc, the only thing that allowed him to kill guards with impunity, glittered in the light where it wasn't dull and splattered with red droplets.

Bogo was dimly aware of the queen's three advisors reacting, far too slowly, to the mammal who had appeared behind them, none of them having even turned around by the time Jamie had closed nearly twenty feet in the blink of an eye. The knives he had thrown seemed to have been the only weapons Jamie had brought with him, but his legs were a blur as he lunged at Bogo, claws outstretched and face twisted with rage, and—

* * *

Bogo woke up and had to repress a groan. When he had still been a cadet, and still able to drink octli, he had drank half-a-dozen bottles with the same elephant who had nearly re-arranged his face the night after their fight. After that night his head had felt like it was full of throbbing, burning needles, a torture he wouldn't have wished or ordered on his worst enemy, and the way he felt as he woke up was nearly as bad. It was odd, he mused, how his thoughts sometimes came full circle in ways he would have never expected. It had been decades since he and Raoul had made up after that one-sided fistfight and— Bogo shook his head and immediately regretted it.

His head suddenly felt as though all of those burning needles were being mercilessly hammered in, and Bogo couldn't help but take in a sharp breath. He looked around, trying to find something to take his mind off the pain, and had a moment's disorientation before realizing he was in the palace's infirmary. It wasn't a part of the palace he spent much time in; the queen and princess received any treatment they needed in the royal suites, and Bogo simply hadn't injured himself very often while on palace duty. Mercifully, however, the normally bright alchemical torches had been shrouded to dim their light, and the cavernous space was full of pooling shadows. As the infirmary had been built for the servants and officers of the palace rather than for the royalty, its layout lacked virtually all of the grandeur that most of the palace had, with walls of plain white stone and a vaulted ceiling without any kind of ornamentation. Even the beds, such as the one he was in, were nothing special, just plain iron frames with stiff mattresses.

It hurt even to move his eyes, but Bogo looked around slowly. He seemed to have the entire infirmary to himself; although there was a metal framework hanging from the ceiling so that curtains could be drawn around any of the beds, which varied dramatically in size to accommodate any species, none of the other beds seemed to be occupied and there weren't any other mammals he could see. Bogo frowned, and felt something stiff on his face wrinkle.

Slowly, trying to do his best to keep his head still, he reached up to touch his face with one hoof, feeling what could only be bandages covering just about the entire lower half of his face, tingling slightly with the healing power of alchemy. He remembered Jamie attacking him, but—"You had a concussion," the queen said, and in his surprise Bogo sat up and then just about keeled over again from the explosion of pain.

Trying not to wince, Bogo turned his head slowly and saw that the queen had been sitting at the head of his bed, outside his line of sight. "Your majesty," he said.

His jaw felt incredibly stiff and his voice wasn't much more than a weak croak. "The princess?" he asked, "Is she—"

"Don't speak," Queen Lana commanded, her voice briefly imperious before it fell to a more conversational tone.

"You saved my daughter," she said, and after a slight pause added, "Again."

She fell silent and just as Bogo was beginning to debate whether he should risk asking a question when she continued. "The traitor escaped," she said, "Bleeding everywhere, the guards said. Do you remember striking him?"

Bogo shook his head from side to side as slowly as he could. Everything that had happened after Jamie had lunged at him with the same terrifying speed that Jorge de Cuvier had possessed simply wasn't there, which he knew was not uncommon for concussions. He still didn't remember any of his decades-ago fight with Raoul, although that might have been a mercy. Bogo was overcome again with that peculiar sensation of his memory looping back on itself, but he managed to avoid the temptation to try shaking his head clear. He could remember drawing his macuahuitl, and even if he couldn't remember using it he had seen what it could do to a mammal when he put all of his strength behind a swing. Jamie might already have bled out—but he might not have. The quauhxicalli that Jorge de Cuvier had used was enough proof that Jamie had outside help, and it seemed unfortunately plausible that there might still be a traitor in the palace.

The queen sighed, interrupting his thoughts. "You're the only one who managed to hit him. He killed six guards on his way to the royal apartments before they could even act," she said, and no matter how she tried to hide it Bogo could see her despair.

Six families had just senselessly lost a son or a daughter, and for some of those families it'd be a wife or a husband, a mother or a father. Six guards had, by the cold chance of their duty rosters, lost their lives, and Bogo hadn't even managed to stop the mammal responsible. He would have his own grief for his lost soldiers, but there was still a job to do and Bogo pushed the emotion aside. "Advisors?" he asked, and the queen seemed to understand the intent behind his question.

"Unharmed, for all the good they did," she said, "I would have expected more out of Corazón, at least."

The queen stood up and Bogo saw, but was not surprised, that she was holding his sabre. She had to carry it with both hooves, it was so large for her, but it was unmistakably his; unlike the officers who had come from the ranks of nobility, Bogo hadn't been able to afford an elaborately ornamented sword when he made the rank of captain. Instead, he had gotten a bluntly functional and unadorned blade, which he had continued to carry even after the point where he could have afforded a nicer-looking sword. On the rare occasions that he thought about it at all, Bogo liked what it told other mammals to see the Captain General of the City Guard carry a sabre that was only a weapon and not an ornament.

He had expected to be stripped of his rank and his position in the royal apartments, his sabre taken away from him at the same time as his torc and its emblems, but he supposed that it was a small act of kindness on the queen's part to wait until he was awake to do so. "You've put me in an awkward spot, Bogo," she said, and he couldn't help but notice that she hadn't used his rank, "The mammal who very nearly managed to arrange the murder of my daughter was your protégé. A mammal who clearly had some additional help, possibly within the palace itself. And you, as the Captain General of my City Guard, completely failed to see either plot coming. Or perhaps you chose not to see either plot. And when the mastermind was caught, based on the work of one of my advisors, he somehow managed to make his way back toward the princess, killing every member of my guard he came across. Until he came across you, who managed to drive him off despite not using a quauhxicalli yourself. "

The queen wasn't yelling, but her voice was all but shaking with anger, her words cold and precise. Bogo opened his mouth to speak, but the queen, somewhat clumsily, pointed his own sword at him and he fell silent. "You understand, I'm sure, that I've been advised to strip you of your rank and throw you in your own dungeons for questioning. If nothing else, I have to appoint someone more suitable to the rank of Captain General. Lady Cencerro even suggested her cousin Diego might make an appropriate candidate, considering his experience managing Phoenix."

If the queen did replace him with Diego Cencerro, there were far worse candidates she could have chosen; although Bogo had not had any input in the sheep's posting as the commander of the Phoenix settlement's branch of the City Guard, the lieutenant commander was at the very least competent if not particularly outstanding in any way. "I do owe her my favor for uncovering a plot you could not, after all. Therefore..."

Although Bogo's bed was low to the ground, the queen was still so short that she had to stretch to reach out with Bogo's sabre and tap him on either shoulder. "I name you Lord Bogo and give you command of the lands the traitor held."

For a moment, Bogo couldn't do anything but look at the queen in dumbfounded amazement at what she had just done. She had just made him a member of the nobility, something he hadn't expected at all, although it did explain in retrospect why she didn't have any guards at her side. He couldn't understand _why_ she had done it until she gave a delicate little laugh, apparently amused at his puzzlement. "You'll be retiring from your post as Captain General once your replacement is trained and ready to take over, but I think you'll be quite busy with your new duties."

"Your majesty?" Bogo managed, his surprise making even his croak of a voice almost completely flat with shock.

"I'm allowed to choose any member of the nobility to be a part of my council. Three is traditional, but four is not unheard of," she said, and instantly Bogo realized what she had done.

She had forced him out without making him go anywhere, making a political play that let her punish him for his failures without really punishing him at all. It was a remarkable display of trust in his abilities despite his failures, although the queen laid it all out as dispassionately as though she had been discussing the weather. "I'll expect you to see your investigation through, Lord Bogo."

"Yes, your majesty," Bogo replied.

"I'm pleased to hear you understand this opportunity, Lord Bogo," she said, and the implication of what would happen if he failed again didn't need to be said for him to understand, "Oh, and one more thing. While you were indisposed, the princess took it upon herself to speak to the reporters. That won't happen again either, will it?"

"No, your majesty," Bogo replied, and the queen inclined her head slightly.

"Now rest up, I hear you have some blood magicians to interrogate," she said, and with that she left his sabre at his side and walked out of the infirmary without another word.

Once she was gone, Bogo allowed his head to gently fall back against his pillow; if anything the throbbing pain was even worse now that he knew what he was in for. He had already failed twice, but Bogo vowed there wouldn't be a third time.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

As this is the last chapter that I'll post in 2018, I wanted to take some time to reflect on some things before getting to the usual chapter-specific stuff. First and foremost, I want to link to an amazing gift that I received from TheWyvernsWeaver; he drew an incredible piece of cover art for my first story, "Black and White, Red and Blue." It's an incredible honor for me, and the care, skill, and effort that were put into it is truly remarkable!

Go check it out over on DeviantArt; unfortunately I can't link it here.

That's a story that I started in 2016, and as I write this now, nearly two years have passed since it ended. A lot of things have changed in that time. I like to think that I've gotten better as a writer since my first work, and certainly the fandom isn't as active as it was when that story started. But the fandom, and the incredible people in it, _is_ still active. Even almost three years after the movie came out, there are still people writing stories and drawing art and otherwise engaging creatively with the property. That's remarkable to see, and I hope that you find my stories to be a worthy contribution to the body of incredible fan content that's come out.

As for me, I have no intentions of stopping any time soon. I simply have too many stories left that I want to tell, and I am honored to have an audience for them. Thank you so much for reading and for all of the comments, the kudos, the favorites, and the follows! Since the last chapter this story hit the milestones of 200 kudos on A3O and 100 follows on FF, and that's all because of readers like you. Believe me, the support that I've gotten is incredible and it means so much to me to have people interested in seeing what'll happen next in my work. On a related note, I've also finalized my decision on the next story that I post. Once "Ouroboros" ends, my next work will be a 1960s spy AU, set against the backdrop of the Cold War. I hope that you'll enjoy it once it starts!

As for this story, and this chapter, my notes are below:

Raoul Llanuras, the elephant who apparently easily beat a young Bogo in a fistfight, takes his surname from the Spanish word for plains.

Interestingly enough, when Bogo references his relationship with Jamie drifting away like a balloon, that's something that Europeans and Aztecs independently came up with. Aztecs made what were very possibly the first balloon animals, inflating animal intestines and shaping them into effigies that were then sacrificed to the gods. In order for balloons to float, they need to be filled with a lighter than air gas, which in early floating balloons was hydrogen gas. As the Hindenburg disaster in 1937 clearly showed, however, hydrogen is extremely flammable. Although helium, an incombustible noble gas, had been discovered in 1895, at the time of the Hindenburg disaster the US was essentially the sole source of useful quantities of helium, which was found in natural gas fields.

In chapter 8, Bogo remembered the incident that permanently turned his stomach against being able to drink octli, which happened after he became an officer. I imagine Bogo in his youth wasn't quite the same character he is in his middle age, which this chapter gives some hints about.

I actually received a question after the last chapter from Cimar of Turalis WildeHopps about what would happen if a member of the City Guard went rogue. Although I did provide an answer, I hopefully managed to avoid saying that would spoil this one; torcs can't be changed remotely, meaning that a guard that still has their torc can hurt others as Jamie did.

As always, thanks for reading, and I'd love to hear from you if you're so inclined! I also hope you have a wonderful and happy 2019!


	17. Chapter 17

As Judy walked along the streets of Phoenix, trying to find the city square, she couldn't help but turn the lieutenant colonel's parting words over in her head. "Be careful out there, ensign," Cencerro had said, and then he gestured at the golden torc he wore at his neck, "We do our best to keep Phoenix safe, but until the Wall is repaired these don't work."

He had smiled blandly, and Judy had no idea what the sheep was trying to convey. Certainly it hadn't been a friendly smile; his eyes had remained cold and hard, making the expression seem especially fake. Perhaps he had merely been patronizing her, as though he thought so little of her he felt the need to say the obvious. She had known, before even meeting Nick, that torcs didn't work beyond the Middle Wall, and if she hadn't Nick's removal of his own torc would have only emphasized the point. It was possible, she supposed, that Cencerro was only being cynical about the prospects of ever repairing the Outer Wall completely enough to allow it to work as an alchemical array. From what she had learned in school, the conversion of the Inner and Middle Walls to function as part of the system that made the torcs work had taken the better part of a decade, but she had never learned the details of what had been involved and knew she probably wouldn't have understood them anyway. Nick would probably know, though, and at the thought Judy came to a stop and pressed herself against the nearest building.

She was on one the countless streets that ran diagonally through Phoenix before branching off in another direction, the buildings looming over the street on either side from crazed protrusions that cast shadows and broke up the even glow of the alchemical torches set on poles. She had changed out of her uniform and into simple civilian clothes, and if anyone was paying enough attention to her to notice her City Guard torc they definitely didn't show it. Foot traffic and the occasional carriage rattled past her, and her ears caught the sounds of dozens of passing conversations, from mammals dining on restaurant balconies above her to the gabble and chatter of the mammals pushing themselves through the throngs filling the street itself. Judy was alone, though, and the thought of Nick only brought with it the promise she had made Cencerro. _Was_ Nick up to something? Something involving an attempt to kill the princess?

Judy sighed as she pressed herself thinner up against the wall to let an elephant who had to keep turning and ducking to get down the street get past her without brushing his elaborately brocaded jacket against her face. It wasn't that she found the idea of someone wanting to kill the princess difficult to believe—back home in the Totchli Barony, she had heard more than a few mammals talking darkly about how the royal family had polluted their bloodline by allowing a jaguar in—but the royal palace was supposed to be the most secure location in all of Zootopia. She had only ever seen Captain General Bogo once and had never spoken to him, but his reputation just about approached being legendary. If someone could figure out a way past the most elaborate security measures he could devise, what did it say about that mammal? They'd have to be exceptionally skilled in magic, probably. They'd have to be clever, certainly. They would have to be, in short, someone very much like Nick.

And yet, Judy hadn't mentioned the promise she had made Nick to help him get a book to Cencerro. It had been a lie of omission, but it had still been a lie, the first she had ever told a superior officer. She wanted to believe that he was innocent, that it was just Cencerro's own obvious dislike of the fox making him consider an unlikely possibility. Maybe it was even just Cencerro's way of dismissing her by giving her a meaningless task instead of letting her help with tracking down the blood magicians he had mentioned. Just because Nick was a fox didn't mean that he had to be evil. And yet...

Nick and the lieutenant colonel obviously had some kind of history together, but she hadn't heard either of their sides. Maybe Cencerro did have a legitimate reason to dislike him. And, no matter how much Judy wanted to believe he was innocent, she couldn't put a finger on why. He was, after all, a supremely suspicious mammal. Judy had never even heard of a predator being an alchemist before meeting him, let alone a fox, and he had seemed amazingly skilled at the magic. She did have the most beautiful sabre she had ever seen wrapped in her bedroll in the officer's quarters that Cencerro had assigned her for her stay in Phoenix, and she still had the little golden carrot in her pocket.

Judy dug around in her pocket until her fingers grasped the cool metal of the golden carrot, and as she ran a finger down the smooth surface she realized why she wanted to believe that Cencerro's instincts were wrong. Nick was the first friend she had made since she had left the family farm to join the City Guard. He was surprisingly kind, no matter how much he teased, and he seemed to genuinely enjoy her company. She remembered how he had looked, how he had felt, as she had groomed the beautiful and luxurious fur of his tail; he was—

Judy laughed at herself as she let go of the little ornament, letting it slip back into the depths of her pocket. She was being ridiculous, she told herself; she could do her job and still hope that Nick was innocent. If Nick was what he seemed to be, she could report back to Cencerro that his fears had been completely unfounded and that would be that. Agonizing over the possibilities wouldn't do anything, and Judy turned her attention back to her original goal.

She had left the barracks with the intent of finding the square where she had promised Nick they would meet the following morning and with finding a place that served a decent dinner. After a few days of somewhat wilted rations the idea of fresh produce had her mouth watering; nothing she had eaten since leaving the Tochtli Barony had been quite as fresh as what she had helped her family grow, but surely Phoenix had to grow most of its own food. Although she hadn't had any success yet in finding the square, finding food seemed if anything too easy; after less than ten minutes of walking she had passed nearly a dozen restaurants or street vendors selling food that looked and smelled amazing.

With her newfound resolve to stop worrying over what Nick might or might not be, she eventually chose a particularly cozy-looking restaurant run by a plump and friendly hedgehog who turned out to be only too happy to give her directions to the public square. After a delicious and surprisingly cheap meal of leafy greens, Judy was on her way again, doing her best to follow the complicated series of turns. Eventually, though, she turned a corner and knew that she must have found the right place.

Like much of the layout of Phoenix that she had seen so far, the square looked as though it had been created by someone randomly drawing straight lines through the wedge-shaped piece of land that the town occupied; it wasn't actually a square at all. Instead, it was an irregular pentagon, with one particularly long side and not so much as a single right angle. Compared to the heart of Zootopia, where all the streets around the royal palace that stood at the heart of the city-state fell into symmetrical concentric perfection for more than a quarter mile, it was ugly and chaotic and suggested a complete lack of planning.

Despite it, or perhaps because of it, Phoenix's main city square was a riot of activity that put everything else Judy had seen so far to shame. The space was the size of two or three city blocks, a large fountain at what was more or less the center, and a bit more than half of the square was taken up with a wild variety vendors selling anything and everything Judy could imagine. The stalls themselves varied in size incredibly, and while they were all set up neatly enough Judy could see no rhyme or reason to how they were laid out. An enormous hippo who looked to be made of pure muscle had a portable forge and a grindstone that he was using to sharpen a knife for a wolf who was only tiny in comparison to the tinker. In the space next to him, nearly completely dwarfed by the hippo's forge, was an otter scribing a letter for a pig and shooting dirty looks at the hippo whenever the sparks from the grindstone shot toward her. Some of the stalls had tents set up, the fabric glowing from within from the light of alchemical torches, and others were set atop elaborate rugs or simply the bare stone of the street. Mammals milled about, some patiently waiting their turn for the vendor they wanted to buy something from to be free and others engaged in shouting matches as to who would be next that looked almost as though they would devolve into brawls.

There had to be two or three hundred vendors, and the noise was incredible, everything from vendors loudly disparaging the quality of their competitors to urchins promising to hold a place in line for a nominal fee. As Judy wandered about, taking care not to be stepped on or step on someone smaller than she was, she thought that the service the young and dirty mammals promised seemed worthwhile; some of the vendors had lines with dozens of mammals in them although the sun had already set. Judy couldn't actually see the vendor with the longest line, but they stuck out in a rather gaudy fashion from not just their immediate neighbors but the entire square.

While some of the tents that the vendors had were particularly elaborate, like miniature castles made of cloth complete with jauntily waving banners, one stall had what looked like a golden tower filling the space. It rose three stories above the ground, tapering to a sharp point, taller even than a stall set up by a giraffe selling something that smelled dangerously alcoholic, and looked to be actually made seamlessly of pure gold polished to a mirror shine. The light of the various alchemical torches other vendors had set up bounced off it, emphasizing its faceted perfection, and Judy wasn't surprised to see that above the doorway there was the ouroboros symbol of the Alchemist Guild worked in gold and set with diamonds. That, she supposed, would be Nick's competition for the bid he planned on putting in, and if she hadn't already seen him demonstrate his skill she might have thought he had absolutely no chance of winning it.

The golden tower certainly seemed impressive enough, but whether it had taken more skill or effort to make than Nick's sabre she couldn't even guess at; for all she knew Nick's demonstration of skill in their sparring match might be as impressive to whoever had made the gaudy tower as the tower itself seemed to be to the mammals waiting to enter. A squirrel dressed in blue robes sparingly embroidered with arcane symbols in copper, a highly polished bronze torc at his neck with an oversized golden ouroboros symbol set on it, was walking back and forth near the tower, and in a surprisingly loud voice considering his diminutive size was promising the miracles of alchemy his master could perform. If the young squirrel, who had to be an apprentice, could be believed, his master could cure anything short of death itself and craft any item that a mammal could imagine.

Compared to how the few alchemists Judy had seen in Zootopia's heart had acted, almost as though they thought they were above other mammals and to so much as interact with them was beneath their dignity, it was surprising to see an alchemist behaving just like any other vendor. Judy had seen fair day vendors in the Tochtli Barony who had been more reserved, but she supposed it was just another part of how Phoenix was different. It seemed almost as though the mammals were less reserved, more freely willing to jostle past each other when they knew that their torcs couldn't cause injury, and as a result they were louder and bolder.

Whatever the cause, though, the square was still loud and packed with mammals, and Judy had begun to turn around to make her way back to the barracks for the night when she caught a glimpse of a familiar shade of red. At first she thought she had mistaken the coloring of a passing tigress, but then she briefly saw Nick working his way through the crowd, moving with a clear sense of purpose as he looked up and down the aisles.

Judy remembered that he had mentioned that Phoenix's central market divided its spaces by lot and realized that he must be looking for something specific but didn't know exactly where it would be. She did her best to creep after him as carefully as she could to avoid being spotted; it seemed to be the perfect opportunity to keep her promise to Cencerro. She told herself that whatever he was looking for as he moved through the crowd of mammals with a grace that she couldn't help but admire would be perfectly innocent, although it was hard to imagine what he could search for that would be particularly incriminating. At last, though, he stopped in front of a stall that even with her lack of expectations Judy found surprising.

It was one of the plainer and smaller spots, especially compared to the more elaborate displays like the one the Alchemist Guild had put up; there wasn't even a rug on the ground, let alone a tent. Instead, there was just a golden eagle somewhat larger than Judy was, blinders over its head and a series of leads tying it down, and a little shrew Judy at first almost didn't see. The shrew looked to be female; she was a bit plump, but that might have just been emphasized by what she was wearing. Her clothes, a spectacularly iridescent set of a tight-fitting tunic and equally tight trousers that both looked to be made of fish skin, complete with a little cap and a set of goggles pushed up on her forehead, made it obvious that she had to be a messenger. The surrounding crowd had been too loud for Judy to hear how Nick's conversation with the shrew started, but when he had hunkered down and delicately offered her a single finger to shake she had instead enthusiastically thrown herself at it and squeezed it into a hug, her long muzzle going almost past the next finger. Clearly someone he knew, then, but Judy was at a complete loss for why Nick would want or need a messenger, and her confusion only grew once she had crept close enough to hear what they were saying.

"—doing well," Nick finished, and the little shrew laughed in a voice that was just as shrill and high-pitched as Judy had expected.

"Whattabout you? Whattaya doin' in Phoenix?" she asked, waving one delicate little paw dismissively, and although Judy couldn't be sure since she was watching from next to a fruit seller some ten feet away she thought the little shrew had painted her minuscule nails a vivid blue.

Judy couldn't quite place the shrew's accent, which was rather strong, but she pushed the thought aside to focus on Nick's response.

"Oh, keeping busy," Nick said, "Hoping to kill two birds with one stone—no offense to Tonaltzintli, of course."

He delicately rubbed the eagle's head, and the bird leaned into it, curling its neck affectionately against Nick's arm. The shrew giggled. "None taken. He likes ya, ya know," she said.

Nick glanced down briefly at the eagle's wicked beak, which was in Judy's mind getting dangerously close to the soft skin of his belly, and smiled. "I have that effect, I'm told," he said.

"Daddy liked ya too," the shrew replied, and Judy got the sense that she was carefully gauging Nick for how he would respond.

Nick sighed. "Could things have gone better?" he said, "Yes, yes they could. But—"

"I know what he asked ya for," the shrew interrupted, so quietly Judy almost couldn't make it out, "Could ya do it, Nicky?"

"Why don't you tell me?" Nick asked, flashing her a brilliant smile, and he pulled something out of a pocket that was so small and so dark that at first Judy couldn't see it against the fur of Nick's paw.

Even once it caught the light right, it didn't look to be all that remarkable; it was a minuscule bag of dark cloth. When he delicately gave it to the shrew, though, she handled it as though it was the most precious treasure that any mammal had ever crafted. She peeked inside, and while Judy couldn't see the contents herself and couldn't be entirely sure, she thought that whatever Nick had given the shrew glowed with its own light. "Oh, Nicky!" the shrew said, and her little eyes were glistening with tears, "Ya really did it! Praise the gods, ya did it!"

She threw herself at his paw again, wrapping her tiny arms around one finger, and her little body was wracked with sobs. Nick coughed; Judy had expected him to bask in the shrew's praise, but he almost seemed embarrassed by the attention. The shrew choked out her thanks between what could only be tears of joy, and Judy found herself more than a little uncomfortable watching the scene. Still, she couldn't help but wonder what Nick had given the shrew and how they knew each other. Judy supposed the bag could have contained minuscule coins; she had learned in the academy that some criminals favored the money minted for the use of Zootopia's smallest citizens because it made it easier to transport quantities worth large sums. The bag hadn't looked like it had been filled enough to contain a fortune, though, but Judy wasn't sure what could have been in it that Nick could have made. And what had the shrew and Nick meant about her father? Could—"Hey, rabbit!" a voice interrupted her thoughts, and Judy almost leaped in surprise as she whirled around.

The mammal addressing her was the marmot running the fruit stand she had hidden behind, and a scowl darkened his features. "You gonna buy anything or not, huh? You can't loiter 'round here, you know," he said, and his voice seemed to rise in both pitch and volume as he jabbed one stubby little finger in her direction.

Judy, trying not to call any more attention to herself, quickly apologized and hastily pulled a pawful of coins out. She wasn't quite sure what she said; she might have said that all the fruit looked so good she had needed some time to decide, and by the time she slapped down the coins in exchange for an assortment of fruit that actually looked quite tasty the marmot's annoyance had given way to a self-satisfied manner. The entire exchange couldn't have taken more than a couple minutes, but when she turned back around her heart sank. Just as she had feared, the shrew and the eagle—and Nick—were gone.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

I figure that Judy's near total ignorance of how torcs work is pretty realistic; although most people can use cars, computers, and phones I think most people would be at a total loss to explain even the basics of how they actually function, let alone the specific details. I figure that, in a world of magic, there's no reason it'd be any different.

A tinker was a real, although currently essentially obsolete, profession for people who repaired houseware. It's also the origin of the word "tinkering" to mean to adjust something.

Universal literacy is a fairly modern development, explaining why someone can support themselves simply writing letters; in a time before everyone could do so for themselves, simply being able to read and write was an incredibly useful skill.

Golden eagles are popularly linked to the sport of falconry, and are commonly regarded as extremely effective, albeit difficult to handle, hunters. The golden eagle is also the bird depicted on Mexico's flag, a reference to a legend that the Aztec people would know where to build a city when they saw an eating a rattlesnake over a lake. Legend has it that present-day Mexico City, built on the same site as Tenochtitlan, is this city. This legend may be a result of misinterpretation of Aztec codices; as has been previously mentioned in my author's notes a lot of information about the Aztecs was lost during the Spanish conquest.

Golden eagles can be pretty large, with wingspans of up to 7 feet 8 inches (2.34 meters), and carrying a shrew would be absolutely no problem for one; golden eagles typically prey on hares, rabbits, and similarly sized mammals, but have been known to go after prey as large as deer.

Tonaltzintli is the Nahuatl word for sun, which seemed an appropriate name for a golden eagle. I imagine birds in this series might be somewhat more domesticated than they are in real life, considering that they would pose a much greater risk to citizens of Zootopia than they would to humans, but would conversely also be possible to ride.

As previously discussed, coins in this setting are a fiat currency rather than having their value tied to the amount of precious metal in them, so it doesn't seem unreasonable for criminals to favor the smallest possible coins for moving large sums. Depending on how money works in the movie, perhaps something similar is done; I can't imagine mice using the same size paper money Judy uses to pay for Nick's pawpsicle.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought, if you're so inclined to leave a comment.


	18. Chapter 18

Bogo squeezed one thick finger in the narrow gap between his torc and his neck and grimaced, watching his reflection in the mirror do the same. The platinum torc he was wearing, a symbol of his new-found position as a member of the high nobility, just didn't seem to fit as comfortably as his old golden one. Maybe it was that it was lighter; after so many years with his old torc's familiar weight around his neck it didn't feel right to be so unburdened. Even his old gold and obsidian rank insignias, with their constellations of five stars that marked him as a captain general, were gone, replaced with identical insignia of platinum and ruby. Bogo didn't know how long he would wear the new insignias before even those were gone; how long he had to train his replacement was entirely at the queen's discretion. What he would keep, even after his retirement, was the change to his torc that made him the most uncomfortable; for the first time in his life he had a sigil, marking the new noble house the queen had created for him.

Bogo grunted as he pulled his finger away from his neck, doing his best to ignore the new ornament, a platinum disc engraved with a blocky image of a buffalo's head with opalescent inserts for the eyes and horns. Perhaps it was supposed to be him, but he certainly didn't see the resemblance; he'd have to ask his wife what she thought. What Maria would think of the story he would tell, from the attempts on the princess's life to his forced retirement and elevation to nobility, was something he couldn't even guess at. It would, however, likely be a few hours before he had the opportunity to find out, considering the task before him, and Bogo set his thoughts of his wife aside.

He took one last glance in the mirror and pulled down on his uniform top—that, at least, was the same as it had ever been—to smooth it before turning away to leave the palace's infirmary. He still had a bit of an ache in his head, somewhere behind his eyes, but the alchemy-infused bandages had been removed and the lump on his head from Jamie's attack was almost entirely gone. Bogo had dozed off again after the queen had left him, and the hour or so extra that he had slept still hadn't been enough to refresh him. It had been an extremely long day, and Bogo once again had to push aside thoughts of Maria—as the unfamiliar sigil jostled against his throat he had wondered again what she would think—as he set off once again for Oztoyehuatl's Jail. The soldiers who had brought in the pair of blood magicians he was determined to question had been possessed of enough foresight, at least, to know not to bring them directly to the palace. Jorge de Cuvier and Jamie had both shown just how dangerous a quauhxicalli user could be, and the thought made Bogo come to a stop as he approached the grand exit of the palace.

Jamie had been in the custody of Cencerro's personal soldiers when he had made his escape. Both of the sheep had been killed, but was it really such a stretch to imagine that Cencerro would sacrifice two of her own mammals? If she had deliberately planned to release Jamie, though, what had her plan been? Had it really been as simple as making another attempt at killing the princess, or had there been another goal? She could have been ensuring that no one would be able to question Jamie, but if that had been the case it would have been far better to have him die in custody. As things stood, all it did was call Cencerro's loyalties into question. It was always possible, though, that someone else was simply trying to throw suspicion upon Cencerro.

Bogo repressed a sigh, and realized that the two guards on either side of the door had been waiting, with no small amount of awkward fidgeting, for him to either make it clear he intended on going through the door or to turn and go down one of the hallways that led off the enormous entrance hall. He strode forward as purposefully as he could, and the relief in the guards' eyes was palpable as they snapped crisply into action and opened the doors for him. Bogo knew he would have to be more careful; it wasn't just the citizens of Zootopia who needed to see a strong front from their leadership. The City Guard, for however much longer they were his to command, deserved nothing less than his best effort, and Bogo nodded at the guards as he passed them.

From the main entrance, it was a short walk to a carriage waiting for him, and in a matter of minutes he was on his way to the jail. Although the ride was relatively short, Bogo had not left the palace unprepared; in addition to leaving him his new torc, the queen had also saw fit to have the latest reports taken from his office and dropped off in the infirmary. There still hadn't been any word back from Phoenix, which was to be expected, but the mammals of the City Guard had successfully found and brought in the weasel and the bear that Alfonso had named as possible candidates for creating the quauhxicalli that Jorge de Cuvier—and, Bogo supposed, Jamie—had used.

What had been added to the files for the two blood magicians wasn't of much interest; Bogo's eyes slid quickly over and past the information, not seeing anything that jumped out at him compared to what the first hasty reports had described. Of far more interest to him was the report that had been written by the court's own blood magician. Unlike the court's alchemist, who seemed to delight in attending every possible court function he could, the court's blood magician tended to keep to herself. Considering the headaches Tomas had caused him, Bogo didn't mind Rosa's less social attitude at all, and it wasn't as though the royal family had many occasions to call on her services. Still, it was a morbid sort of coincidence that Rosa was a cheetah and her report—once Bogo had plowed his way through the dense technical parts he didn't understand—agreed with Alfonso's assessment. The quauhxicalli Cuvier used had, in Rosa's opinion, been created from the life of a cheetah, and the three pages of dense justifications for how she had reached that conclusion were entirely beside the point.

For the first time since he had boarded the carriage, Bogo looked up and out one of the windows at the city. He had passed the grand estates of the oldest and most powerful nobles a while back, and the street the carriage was rattling down was a perfect example of Zootopia's upper middle class. The most prosperous merchants and the highest-paid professionals lived in houses and apartments that approached, but never dared to match or exceed, the grandeur of what the nobles lived in. They were, to Bogo's eye, gaudy monstrosities more concerned with showing off how wealthy the inhabitants were rather than anything else; there was no other way to explain the eyesore of a giant stepped pyramid, so completely covered in elaborately engraved silver that it burned red in the rising sun, that was considered the most exclusive apartment building in all of the Inner Baronies for anyone without a noble title. It was one of the safest parts of Zootopia; even crimes like pick-pocketing were incredibly rare, and if a cheetah had gone missing from one of the lofty buildings the City Guard would have known right away.

There were other neighborhoods, though, where the City Guard would never be contacted about a missing mammal. Neighborhoods where there were some mammals—not many, but some—who had managed to make it to adulthood without ever getting a torc. Neighborhoods like the one Bogo had grown up in. He realized he had been touching his torc, and the cold reality of the smooth platinum made his youth seem almost impossible, like a bad dream, and he relaxed his grip. Rosa's report had theorized that the cheetah used to make the quauhxicalli had come from Phoenix, but it occurred to Bogo that it wasn't the only option. There were some neighborhoods, near the border between the Inner Baronies and the Middle Baronies where the buildings and the Wall blotted out the sky, where a young cheetah might slip through the cracks of the being assigned a torc as a cub. It was a crime not to have one, of course, but the city was too large to enforce it on every single mammal, and if a blood magician needed a sacrifice a mammal no one would miss it seemed the perfect choice.

Bogo's frown turned thoughtful as he considered the idea. In contrast to the dense jargon that made up most of Rosa's report, she had been rather straightforward on one point. In her mind, it had taken an extremely skilled blood magician to make the quauhxicalli, and she had claimed that it would take her at least a week if she had been the one to manufacture it. She had, however, conceded the possibility that the blood magician who had actually done so might have been able to do so more quickly. Bogo thought that he would have to make a point of talking to Rosa when he got back to the palace; in that little self-contained world it was incredibly rare for someone to so blandly suggest that they could be responsible for even a trivial misdeed, let alone a monstrous crime. He doubted that Rosa would have any reason to actually help either Jorge de Cuvier or Jamie, but Jamie had proven that his judgement wasn't perfect.

Bogo had just finished writing himself a note to have the City Guard prod more deeply into Rosa's affairs than they already had when the carriage came to a stop in front of Oztoyehuatl's Jail. It looked much the same as it had on his last visit, or on any of his previous ones; Bogo had long since lost count of how many times he had visited the jail. The security was as good as ever, and soon Bogo found himself in front of the first suspect he wanted to talk to.

The weasel's cell didn't have quite the same setup as Alfonso's, as the weasel was much larger, but it was close enough. The walls were thick and made of diamond, the only openings far too small for the prisoner to get so much as a claw through, let alone his entire body. Outside the ring of the alchemical array that prevented the use of alchemy within the cell more than a dozen alchemical torches blazed, completely banishing any shadows and throwing the pitiful prisoner into sharp focus.

The weasel, sitting on a cot at the center of the cell, still wore obnoxious finery of the sort that made him look like he was clumsily imitating a noble, but his torc had been replaced with one of lead that marked him as a prisoner. This, Bogo couldn't help but note, seemed particularly concerning to the weasel; he jerked one paw away from it as Bogo entered and turned to look at him. The weasel was long and lean, with brown fur that stuck out in all directions, and his eyes were large and fearful as he took Bogo in.

In response, Bogo simply folded his arms across his chest and silently took stock of the prisoner through the diamond wall that separated them. One of the advantages of his size was that it took very little effort to be intimidating; as he knew would happen the weasel was the first to talk. "How can I help the City Guard?" the weasel asked at last in a voice that was more of a whine, and then after his eyes flickered to Bogo's neck, he hastily stood, bowed, and added, "Milord?"

Bogo had to resist grimacing at the use of the title; he wasn't sure he would ever get used to mammals calling him "lord" but he couldn't resist the opportunity the weasel had given him. Immediately before going to the weasel's cell, Bogo had stopped at the guard station long enough to grab the torc the weasel had been wearing when he had been brought in. The torc was made out of bronze but was so covered in platinum beads that almost none of the metal was visible, and Bogo wordlessly held it out and dropped it. Once the jangling thud of the torc hitting the cold stones outside the cell had faded into a silence that had to be increasingly uncomfortable for the weasel, Bogo leaned forward slightly and spoke. "I hear you're a lord too. Duke, was it?" he said.

The weasel's laugh was satisfyingly nervous, and Bogo couldn't help but notice his eyes darting about the room looking for an exit that didn't exist. "Just a little nickname, milord. I'm the Duke of Quauhxicallis, you see, that's what customers call me, but your lordship can call me—"

"I know your name," Bogo interrupted, "I know a lot about you, Wilfrido. You've had run ins with the City Guard before."

Wilfrido chuckled, and the nervous edge to his laughter was more pronounced. "Those were all misunderstandings, milord," he said, spreading his arms out and favoring Bogo with a smile that revealed a number of teeth gaudily set with gems, "My quauhxicallis are of the finest quality."

"You've been arrested before for quauhxicallis that didn't match their labels," Bogo replied, doing his best to sound bored and uninterested as he opened the file he had on Wilfrido and flipped through it, "Nearly a year in jail for that. We can add more time, of course."

It was all for show, of course—without his glasses on, the text was too small for him to read at arm's length—but it had the desired effect. Wilfrido seemed to blanch beneath his fur, his pupils constricting to pinpricks. "That was—" Wilfrido began, his voice suddenly shrill and trembling; when he started over he sounded somewhat more normal.

"My old business partner was a crook, milord, I won't deny that," he said, "But I had no idea he was doing it, I swear by all the gods. I'm honest and straight as an arrow now. If you can't take _my_ word, ask my guild representative. I've been in good standing for years now."

Wilfrido was gesticulating a bit wildly as he spoke, hitting his narrow chest for emphasis, and his breathing was shallow and rapid. In response, Bogo simply grunted as dismissively as he could. He thought he had Wilfrido exactly where he wanted him, but he knew he'd have to be careful about how he applied pressure to him. Too little and the weasel would regain his footing, and too much and the weasel might make things up wildly in an attempt to please him. "You've got some skill with making quauhxicallis, then?" Bogo asked, and he thought the weasel's response would indicate perfectly how well he was being pressured.

Wilfrido nodded vigorously, his head bobbling as though it was about to come off. "Oh, yes, milord, yes," and for a brief instant Bogo felt a stab of disappointment, thinking he had overdone it.

However, when Wilfrido continued, Bogo had to repress a smile. "I'm not the best, of course, never did master the complicated ones, but there's something to be said for the simple ones, isn't there?" Wilfrido said, his words seeming to gain confidence as he kept speaking, "I can do those faster and cheaper than anyone else, milord."

Bogo frowned and nodded as thoughtfully as he could. He got the sense that Wilfrido was being honest—or at least, as honest as a charlatan could be—and it was time to push for what he really wanted. "So you wouldn't know how to create a quauhxicalli that would take a life to make?" Bogo asked, trying to make the question sound as bland as possible.

The effect on Wilfrido was immediate. He stumbled, nearly falling backwards over his cot. "A life?" he repeated, his voice even shriller than it had been the first time Bogo had challenged him, "No one could do that!"

"Someone did," Bogo replied evenly.

The horror on Wilfrido's face was so obvious that Bogo doubted that it could be an act. He didn't think that the weasel had the skill to make such a quauhxicalli himself, but that didn't mean that he had no involvement. Whether the cheetah that had been sacrificed had come from Phoenix or from one of the worst neighborhoods of the Inner or Middle Baronies, the blood magician who had made the sacrifice might have needed help. "Someone murdered a cheetah to make a quauhxicalli," Bogo continued, his eyes never leaving Wilfrido's, "Do you know anything about that?"

The weasel seemed to hesitate a moment. "Nothing, milord," he said at last, and Bogo pushed down his interest, keeping his face as stoic as possible.

Wilfrido was, he was almost positive, lying. He knew something, perhaps something that he hadn't realized was important until Bogo had started asking questions. Perhaps the weasel had simply overheard something; no matter what Wilfrido said about being an honest business mammal Bogo didn't buy it. "Very well," Bogo said, "If you can't help me find a blood magician who _could_ do that, I'm afraid we'll have to hold you here until we find the culprit."

"You can't do that!" Wilfrido protested, and Bogo took a single step forward, allowing his anger and frustration with the case to bubble to the surface until his face.

"Are you trying to tell the captain general of the City Guard what he can and cannot do?" Bogo asked, putting as much menace into his voice as possible.

Wilfrido shook his head, and Bogo felt a thin smile to cross his face. "I'll be back in ten minutes or so," Bogo said, "That should give you some time to think."

Without giving Wilfrido so much as the opportunity to react, Bogo turned around and left to visit the next suspect.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

In the real Spanish army, the rank insignia for a captain general is five four-pointed stars arranged in a diamond, crossed by a pair of sabres, and with a crown above them. Judy's rank insignia were previously mentioned to be obsidian and gold, as were Bogo's prior to his elevation to the ranks of nobility.

A sigil is a somewhat archaic word for a seal, and I thought it made sense that a new noble house would accordingly require a symbol.

Since torcs are, naturally, something that needs to be put onto a mammal after they're born, I figured it made sense that this would be an actual law in the city, and it'd be a crime not to have one. Similarly, I think it only follows that, for some portion of the population, they would manage to avoid getting a torc.

The court blood magician has been mentioned a few times in previous chapters, but this is the first one to establish her name and species. In chapter 10, Bogo didn't have her report on Jorge de Cuvier's quauhxicalli yet, which in her opinion aligns with Alfonso's theory from chapter 8.

Wilfrido is this story's version of Duke Weaselton, and I found it a lot of fun to consider how Bogo would interrogate him given the opportunity.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought if you're so inclined to leave a comment.


	19. Chapter 19

Judy wasn't sure how she had managed to find her way back to the barracks, but it didn't seem to matter. Her thoughts raced too wildly to focus on anything around her, and she couldn't remember any of the journey. It all kept coming back to that little shrew, because Judy had the awful feeling she knew exactly who Nick had been speaking to. How could she not? The arrest of the crime lord Big had happened only days before she had graduated from the academy, and it had been all anyone in her class could talk about. Captain General Bogo's introduction before giving the commencement address had mentioned his latest and greatest triumph, but he hadn't, instead speaking only on the importance of the City Guard as a whole. Judy had admired his humility, but she would have been lying if she said she hadn't imagined being in his place. What would she have done, if she had been the one clever and dedicated enough to finally capture one of the city's worst criminals? Would she have been able to capture Big's daughter Fernanda?

It had been almost an afterthought in the coverage of the story, that Big had managed to get his daughter to safety before his own arrest. Judy, however, had every word the papers had run just about burned into her memory. If Nick was trying to help the daughter of Zootopia's most notorious crime lord, why was he doing it? Did it have anything to do with the attempt on the princess's life?

Judy stared up at the ceiling above the cot in the officer's quarters, willing things to make sense. The officer's quarters were silent and deathly still, the thick stone of the walls isolating her completely from the enlisted soldiers in their cavernous shared bunk room. The silence gave the very air a sort of suffocating weight to it as Judy considered the possibilities, her thoughts consuming her. She could practically see it play out across the dull stone ceiling above her, an image of the little shrew messenger—who she desperately tried to think of being anyone but Fernanda—springing her father from jail with some kind of alchemical weapon Nick had made her before they went on to overthrow the queen. It was crazy, she told herself. Nick wasn't the sort of mammal who would do something like that, and it was ridiculous to think that she had simply stumbled upon a vast criminal conspiracy by dumb luck. It was crazy, Judy told herself again, letting out a deep breath she hadn't realized she had been holding.

Judy rolled over onto her side, the firm cot barely yielding at all, and stared at the wall, which was just as uninteresting as the ceiling. Her eyes stole to the little table she had set the sabre Nick had given her. The officer's quarters were almost too dark for her to see it, but it glittered faintly in the light coming through the one high and narrow window, and Judy remembered how he had given it up. There had to be a perfectly rational explanation for what she had seen in the market. Yes, it was true that Cencerro had held not even slightly concealed contempt for Nick. And yes, it was true that Nick had told her basically nothing about his past or how he came to be an alchemist. And most of all, it was undeniable that Nick had given _something_ to a shrew who perfectly matched the description of Big's daughter. There had to be a reasonable explanation, one in which Nick wasn't some criminal mastermind.

And yet, as she rolled over onto her back again, Judy just couldn't see it.

* * *

"What's got your ears down, Carrots?" Nick asked, "Did Cencerro make you scrub the floors with a toothbrush?"

Judy tried, and almost certainly failed, to look more cheerful, and she smiled weakly at his little joke. Nick certainly looked to be in a better mood than she was; he had the same self-satisfied expression as ever, and he had dressed himself much more dramatically than he had at any point on their trip together. His bottle-green coat had been replaced by a set of robes in a slightly different shade of green, with arcane symbols embroidered on it in gold. If it weren't for his species, and the lack of an ouroboros symbol on his torc, he really would look exactly the part for an alchemist in a way he never had before. Nick had in fact set up a booth in the market, exactly as promised, although his was far less gaudy than the one for the other alchemist Judy had seen the previous day. Instead of an elaborate castle-like tent of gold, Nick simply had a block of a stone table engraved with a single word—ALCHEMIST—and absolutely nothing on top of it. It was at first glance completely unimpressive, but on closer inspection it was the most perfect table Judy had ever seen, all of its sides completely level and unblemished and its corners looking as sharp as razors. Even if Judy hadn't traveled with Nick it would have been obvious that he completely lacked the strength to transport such a thing, and she supposed that he must have created it from the ground of the market square.

The reminder of his skill with alchemy brought up, unbidden, the memory of the glowing contents of the little bag he had given Fernanda. _No_ , Judy told herself firmly, _the shrew._ Until she was positive that Nick was guilty of a crime, it was her sworn duty as a member of the City Guard not to act as though he was. He might even be her friend. Unless, of course, he was some kind of conspirator.

At the thought, Judy looked at Nick more closely, but he appeared completely guileless. He certainly didn't look like he was laboring under the burden of being a key player in some kind of scheme to topple the monarchy or bring a crime lord back to power. He was just a fox— _Oztoyehuatl had been_ just _a fox_ a voice that sounded a lot like her father's murmured in the back of her head—tall and slender for his species, a mildly concerned expression beginning to cloud his face. Judy realized she had taken far too long to respond to his little joke and hastily waved one dismissive paw, nearly losing her grip on her spear as she did so. She had decided, before leaving the barracks without so much as a word to anyone else, lest of all Cencerro, that she would come to the market in her full City Guard uniform with all her equipment. Just in case.

"No, no, nothing like that!" Judy said, and her voice sounded unnaturally high and hearty to her ears, "I just—I didn't sleep well."

It was, after all, the truth; Judy didn't think she had gotten more than an hour's sleep the entire night. "Ah," Nick said, nodding sympathetically, "It can be hard, sleeping someplace new."

Nick was making it incredibly difficult for Judy to suspect him of some kind of treachery. As he had been on the road, he was friendly and cheerful, but if he was conspiring to help a criminal attack the royal family—whether for revenge or power or any of the other dozens of awful possibilities she had thought up—wasn't that exactly what he would want his escort to think? But that was just thinking that he was suspicious because he _wasn't_ acting suspicious, and if she went down that path where would it end?

Judy tightened her grip on her spear, willing herself to stay calm. She just had to give Nick a fair chance, that was all. She just needed to figure out if he really was a criminal and then she could put the whole nightmare her first official assignment had become behind her. "You're certainly here early," Nick continued, and if he had any inkling of her inner turmoil he certainly didn't show it, "Just in time to watch me put the finishing touches on my booth."

Nick hummed slightly to himself as he unrolled a piece of cloth with a complicated pattern of circles and triangles that made the one he had wrapped the sabre in look simple and set his alchemical focuses at intersection points. He was just about to touch his paws to either side of the cloth atop the smooth stone of his table when Judy spoke almost without realizing it. "Have you been doing this long?" she asked, and Nick looked up at her, one eyebrow raised.

"Setting up an alchemy booth? Oh, I've been at it for a while," Nick said, rolling one paw in a vague gesture.

"Even though Phoenix already has an alchemist?" Judy pressed, and Nick chuckled.

"You've heard of Master Rogelio, then. Some of us don't need fancy booths to get customers," Nick said, and he seemed to be pointedly directing his words over her shoulder.

Judy spun in place and saw the same squirrel apprentice she had seen the previous night, his cheeks puffed out with exertion as he pushed a cart significantly larger than he was and piled high with what looked like sheets of gold foil so fine that they'd be invisible if seen edge-on. Next to him, and making absolutely no effort to help, was the single gaudiest mammal Judy had ever seen.

The porcupine, who Judy assumed to be Master Rogelio, put those few alchemists she had seen in the heart of Zootopia to shame; not only were his blue robes so heavily embroidered with gold thread that almost no blue was visible, but all of his quills had been gilded. His gold-covered quills gleamed brilliantly in the light of the rising sun, revealing that most of them were delicately engraved with words and symbols Judy couldn't understand, but the quills closest to the top of his head were even more elaborately decorated. There, the porcupine had set delicate gems, no bigger than grains of sand, that glowed with their own internal light. At his neck, the porcupine wore what would have been the single largest torc decoration Judy had ever seen if she had never seen an elephant; it was a monstrous ouroboros symbol that looked larger than some actual snakes. The level of detail and the gems set into it made the ouroboros his apprentice wore appear almost understated, and when the porcupine scowled at Nick Judy was half-surprised that his teeth weren't similarly encrusted with jewels.

The porcupine certainly seemed to have a face made for scowling, a well-worn crease crossing his forehead as he drew himself up to his full height. "I thought you would have given up by now," he said, and his voice held the poshest accent Judy had ever heard, so much so that it almost sounded like a parody of a noble.

He did not, Judy noticed, have the platinum torc that would have marked him as a member of society's upper echelon, and Nick didn't seem to respect him like one. "Oh, unless your proposal goes through, there's plenty of room in the market for the both of us. Wouldn't you agree, Master Rogelio?"

Nick's words sounded perfectly sincere, and yet somehow completely lacked respect; perhaps it was because Nick had casually leaned over his table and spread his paws wide to take in the market. It was true that there was plenty of room, as it seemed as though most mammals hadn't begun setting up yet; there were perhaps one or two dozen booths, scattered around like a pawful of grain on a windy day, that only emphasized how large the square was by how empty it was. A few mammals were beginning to mill about, but none were paying them any mind.

Rogelio's scowl somehow managed to intensify. "Your days of selling trinkets and novelties are numbered, fox," he said, "Mark my words, you will regret the day you ever thought to profane the art of alchemy with your filthy—"

"Excuse me, sir," Judy interrupted, as sweetly as she could, "Are you making a threat? You could be arrested for that."

Whether or not Nick was a criminal, her conscience simply wouldn't let her stand aside as a civilian tried bullying him. Rogelio's attention turned to her, as though he was noticing her for the first time, and his lips thinned as he looked her up and down. "You must not be from Phoenix, ensign," he said at last, and he pointed at Nick with one finger, revealing a rather thick and ugly ring, "But you still ought to know better than to... linger around a fox."

The words stung more than they should have. It certainly wasn't just because Nick was a fox that she was beginning to be suspicious of him; even if he had been another bunny she was sure she would have been just as diligent in doing her job. "The City Guard has a duty to look into suspicious mammals," Nick said, and Judy's heart began to speed up.

He had spoken the words blandly enough, but did he know that she was trying to prod more deeply into his motives? Or was it just a coincidence of him needling his fellow alchemist? "Take care then, Nicholas," Rogelio said, and he turned to Judy again, "Certainly, ensign, it was not my intent for my words to be misconstrued."

"They've been clear as glass," Nick said cheerfully, "You have a good day now. You too, Santiago."

Santiago, the squirrel apprentice, had been silent the entire time, but considering the cart he had been pushing that might have been exhaustion as much as it was respect for his master; he had spent the entire conversation puffing and wheezing as he caught his breath. Judy felt as though the squirrel almost said something in response, but at a quick look from his master he simply gave a grunt of effort as he pushed the heavy cart back into motion.

"What was that about?" Judy asked, and Nick's only response at first was a shrug.

When she fixed him with a level stare, however, Nick sighed. "It's all politics," he said, "I try to stay out of it, you know."

Again, Judy couldn't help but wonder if his words had some deeper meaning. Was he mocking her, thinking she wasn't aware of his scheme? "See, some mammals—puffed up members of the Alchemist Guild like Master Rogelio there, mostly—want to make it illegal to practice alchemy without being in the guild," Nick said.

"Why?" Judy asked, and despite herself she was interested in the answer although it didn't seem likely to have much relevance to the dilemma she was facing.

"Why do you think?" Nick asked, a thin smile crossing his face, "Less competition means they can charge more. They say it's about safety and accountability and so on, of course."

"But..." Judy began, pausing to think her words out, "Why haven't they already done that? The Alchemist Guild is the most powerful—"

"Let me let you in on a little secret," Nick interrupted in a low voice, leaning forward and gesturing Judy toward him in a conspiratorial manner, "You saw Santiago there, didn't you?"

"Yes," Judy said, leaning in, although she was completely confused as to what kind of point Nick was getting at.

"What do you think his chances are of becoming a master alchemist like Rogelio?"

"They have to be pretty good, right?"

"No, no they don't," Nick said, "The nasty little secret of the Alchemist Guild is that maybe one in every ten apprentices becomes a master. Those other nine apprentices never learn the secret of making a true philosopher's stone, but that doesn't mean they can't do any alchemy. So there's a sort of agreement. Those failed apprentices do the simple work the masters can't be bothered with, and the masters do the complex work that no one else can. Mammals like Rogelio who want the whole pie don't have the sway to change things, and there's plenty of work for everyone."

"But you were never an apprentice, were you?" Judy asked suddenly.

For a moment, she would have sworn she saw a flicker of surprise on Nick's face, and she plowed forward, "You never made that agreement."

She thought she saw what might be the largest part of why Rogelio didn't like Nick; presumably a job like purifying Phoenix's wells was supposed to be something that the Alchemist Guild would have no competition for, and as such could charge whatever they wanted. With Nick involved, though, Judy supposed that even if Rogelio won the bid he wouldn't make nearly as much profit, and considering the way he dressed she guessed he didn't care for much else.

"Very clever, Ensign Carrots," Nick said approvingly, "That's right. Rogelio doesn't like that, you can be sure of it."

"How _did_ you learn alchemy, then?" Judy asked; it was a question that seemed to be at the heart of the enigma that he was.

"Oh, you know," Nick said vaguely, "Here and there. I told you, it's a long and boring story."

"I want to hear it, though," Judy said.

"Maybe later, then," Nick said, "For now, though..."

Before Judy could even begin to protest his latest deflection, Nick set his paws on either side of the cloth still on top of his stone table and Judy felt the increasingly familiar power of alchemy. Her fur stood on end, the air suddenly sharp, and symbols began appearing on the table, so dark that they seemed like infinite voids. With a sudden flash of light, the symbols became grooves, but the light didn't end; the symbols began to glow with their own pale light. It was, Judy had to admit, a far simpler display of alchemical power than Rogelio's tent, but no less clear; even an illiterate mammal would have no trouble figuring out that the booth belonged to an alchemist.

"Well, that's all set," Nick said, rolling up his cloth as he nodded approvingly at his work, "So how about we see if we can pick up that book I want? It _is_ a bit of a walk."

"What about your booth?" Judy asked, although it was more an attempt to buy more time to figure out what Nick was up to rather than an honest interest in what happened in the market.

Nick chuckled. "It's literally part of the ground. It's not going anywhere until I want it to."

Without any further arguments to pose, Judy reluctantly followed Nick, but just as they were leaving the market decided to go for broke. "I saw you speaking to a shrew last night," she began, keeping a careful eye on Nick's face.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

The version of Alfonso's arrest that Judy read about doesn't really match up with how Bogo remembers it happening, but of course both the papers and Bogo have their own biases. This chapter also reveals that the one time Judy mentions having seen Bogo was at her graduation. I did, I admit, plot things out so that neither one actually personally knows the other, but have wildly different opinions. Judy respects Bogo by his reputation and what she has seen of him. Bogo only knows of Judy and most definitely does not respect her.

I think it also says something about each character that Bogo consistently refers to the crime lord by his actual name, Alfonso, while Judy knows him by one of his chosen names, Big.

Master Rogelio's rather tacky sense of style was, I thought, rather appropriate considering how he sets up his booth with what's essentially a golden castle. His clothes are at least as richly embroidered as what the court alchemist, Tomas, is described to wear, and I thought quill gilding worked as something both fashion-conscious and practical. I would imagine that life for porcupines in the world of Zootopia has to be somewhat difficult, what with the risk of accidentally stabbing someone with your quills. In this particular setting, that's an even worse risk, since in most of the city-state your torc is going to give you an injury identical to that of your victim. Coating quills with metal could also serve to give them a blunt end without having to cut off the barbs. Whether that looks better or worse is, of course, entirely a matter of personal taste, but Rogelio's tastes seem pretty clear.

This chapter fleshes out the organization of the Alchemist Guild a bit more, and I figure that this also helps explain why complete philosopher's stones are so rare and expensive in this setting. The number of master alchemists is very low, and thus their services are expensive.

Nick previously claimed, in chapter 3, that the story of how he learned alchemy is long and boring, and he makes the same claim in this chapter. Whether or not you believe that is, I suppose, entirely up to you.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought if you're so inclined as to leave a comment.


	20. Chapter 20

Blanca of the Cetl Barony had been nicknamed Osita at some point in her life, but the days when the name was ironic were long gone. The polar bear was thin for her species, almost unhealthily so; her skin seemed to hang loosely on her frame under its rough coating of matted white fur speckled with green algae. She wore a plain but dirty dress of cotton that might have been blue at some point, the color nearly worn entirely out of it. Blanca's eyes were red-rimmed and fever-bright, and she glared at Bogo with silent contempt as he approached her cell.

When he was standing right in front of the thick wall of diamond that separated them, she pushed herself to her feet off of her cot. She was almost as tall as Bogo was, and although Bogo easily had her outweighed by several hundred pounds and was on the right side of the cell walls she showed no sign of being afraid or intimidated. "I don't speak to _prey_ ," she said, her voice coarse and low, and then she spat on the wall that separated them.

Bogo watched the spittle drip down the perfectly smooth wall of diamond silently. When he had been younger and less experienced, he might have given into the urge to come back with a smart remark—"You just did," perhaps—but it took no effort to let the opportunity pass and simply look down into her eyes.

Even though Bogo had never met the sickly-looking polar bear in his life, he knew her kind. He was sure that there would always be those predators dreaming of the glory days, over long before their great-grandparents had been born, when prey had been slaves to the predator ruling class. The last arrest Bogo had made while walking the city beat had been a spectacularly drunk cougar who, upon being arrested, had claimed to be a direct descendant of one of the old ruling families and had ordered Bogo to remove his "filthy hooves." That self-declared lord had spent the night sobering up in a cell, and had it not been Bogo's last action as an officer on the beat he doubted it would have stuck in his head.

Bogo had read the file on Blanca and thought he knew everything he needed to know about her; predators who thought like her were almost boringly the same when you really looked at them. In earlier years she had almost certainly helped write treasonous pamphlets, calling for the queen's abdication and for the prince consort to take the throne, but she had been at least smart enough to avoid anyone positively linking her to it. Not that it mattered much, in the grand scheme of things; Bogo and both of his immediate predecessors had more important things to take care of than a small number of discontents.

The birth of the princess had, almost certainly, brought Blanca to rage against such a hybrid. The princess had, in fact, fractured those calling for predator supremacy between those who thought she was a step forward for their cause and those who thought any amount of prey blood in a predator was too much. Blanca, it seemed, had been one of the latter, and if the rhetoric Bogo strongly suspected Blanca of writing had grown ever stronger and more absurd—her latest proposal, it seemed, was for the complete dissolution of the monarchy and its replacement with a council of noble predators to be chosen from those who participated in her cause—her own fortune seemed to have almost completely waned. If, that was, the wretched and pathetic example of a bear that glared angrily at him was any indication; he certainly doubted that her business was doing very well any more.

Although the torc Blanca had been wearing had been replaced with a plain prisoner's band of lead, Bogo had seen it when he had picked up Wilfrido's gaudily decorated one, and her guild symbol was pitted and corroded with age, the torc it was on scratched and smudged with greasy fingerprints. Altogether, the impression of Blanca that Bogo got was of a mammal who had descended into her own bitterness and impossible political dreams so deeply that she had just about lost her own ability to take care of herself. Prey outnumbered predators ten to one, after all, and while there were plenty of businesses that survived and thrived dealing only with predators it didn't appear as though Blanca's was one of them.

The silent moment after Blanca had spit must have dragged out into an eternity for her, because despite her vow she spoke again. Mammals like her always did, no matter what they promised, and it took much more effort for Bogo to resist a small smile at her crumbling than it had for him to stay silent himself. "You have no right to hold me here," she said, and Bogo thought he heard her voice crack a little, "No right!"

She was starting to panic, then. Starting to realize that, unlike all of her previous encounters with the City Guard, she had misplayed it. Whatever charm Blanca had once held—or, Bogo admitted to himself, whatever luck she might have held when it came to the officers who questioned her—was as wasted away as she herself was. Bogo considered her more carefully, watching as her breathing became more rapid and she nervously licked at her cracked lips, revealing a mouthful of yellowed teeth. He could certainly believe that Blanca would have a reason to try murdering the princess, and perhaps even the technical skill with making quauhxicallis with which to do so. What he was less sure of, however, was if she would have the ability to recruit other mammals to her cause anymore, particularly a llama. Could she have successfully put aside her hatred of prey to use one as her pawn? Perhaps. Or perhaps Jaime had been responsible for drawing Jorge de Cuvier in; he had always been remarkably charismatic. Perhaps Blanca had been _Jaime's_ pawn.

Bogo was silent a moment longer, waiting for Blanca's panic to hit just the right point, before he spoke. "I have the queen's approval to do anything it takes to solve a mystery. _Anything_ ," he said, and he did his best to fill the last word with every dire implication he possibly could.

At the mention of the queen, Blanca's face distorted in disgust, but only briefly, before it crumpled into anxiety again. The polar bear seemed to be laboring under the impression that she could hide her feelings from him, but he felt as though he could see right through her. Anti-royal statements, she seemed to be realizing, were no longer a game that the City Guard mostly ignored when they weren't breaking up printing presses. Bogo could feel his deathly seriousness radiating off like the light from a blindingly bright alchemical torch, and unless Blanca was much stupider than she looked she looked she would not underestimate him despite her obvious contempt for prey.

"I didn't do anything," she whined, her tone eerily similar to Wilfrido's just minutes earlier.

"I haven't accused you of anything," Bogo said mildly, "Not yet, at least."

"Well—" Blanca began, and then swallowed hard before continuing, "I'm not a criminal."

Her eyes darted from Bogo's face to the impenetrable walls of diamond that made up her cell; she was trapped and knew it. "You've come close to being arrested before," Bogo said, looking down at her file in the same little bit of theater he had used on the weasel, "Nothing that stuck, it seems. Do you know why that would be?"

"Because—Because I'm not a criminal!" Blanca said, and Bogo shook his head slowly.

"That's not true," he said, "You had friends in the City Guard. Or perhaps in lower places."

It was more Bogo's intuition than any solid fact that suggested the conclusion to him, but it did fit what he knew. Blanca was far too small-time an agitator for her file to have ever crossed his desk before; his generals only bothered him with credible threats to the royal family. But the pattern her file suggested, one of coming away clean despite being in the wrong place at the wrong time with a frequency that would be unlikely for an innocent mammal, suggested she had some kind of connection. Perhaps one in the City Guard; perhaps even to Jaime himself. Or, considering that she was a polar bear, perhaps to Alfonso. The little shrew had seemed to have something of a fondness for using polar bears and it didn't seem impossible for Blanca to be a cousin or an in-law to one of Alfonso's lieutenants. Alfonso had been nothing if not practical, and a skilled blood magician would be exactly the sort of mammal he'd want to have owing him a favor.

Blanca had obviously fallen on hard times, perhaps as recently as a month ago or perhaps as long as five or six. Had she lost the favor of the protector she had relied on? Perhaps. Or perhaps she had been forced into a very desperate position by someone in need of a very difficult to manufacture quauhxicalli. Desperation could make a mammal do things that they normally wouldn't, after all. Bogo was patient enough to wait, and when Blanca's answer came at last, it was in a low mumble that he could barely hear.

"General del Bosque."

Although Bogo couldn't name all of his captains any more than he could name all of the stars in the sky, he did know each and every one of his generals. General del Bosque had been, as he recalled, an old wolf—nearly ninety, if he was remembering correctly—whose heart had finally given out about four months previously as he slept one night. He had enjoyed his position as a general for a remarkably long time, and if he had felt slighted for being passed up for the top slot and instead having to report to Bogo—who had, at the time of his promotion to captain general, held many decades less experience—he had never shown it. The grizzled old wolf had seemed quite content to keep order in his own little sliver of Zootopia, and while he had been dreadful at writing reports he had never otherwise much stuck out in Bogo's mind.

In retrospect, however, it occurred to Bogo that del Bosque's mammals did seem to arrest somewhat fewer predators than in other parts of Zootopia. Bogo had never paid it much mind, but the idea that the wolf had been sympathetic to predators who wished to see prey brought low seemed unfortunately plausible. As far as Bogo was concerned, it was also the end of his suspicions when it came to Blanca, and when he prodded at her knowledge of the attempts on the princess's life she certainly didn't seem to know anything of value.

That did not mean that he was going to let her go; so far as he was concerned her sins had finally caught up to her, and his only thought as he left her alone in her cell was to make sure that the mammals del Bosque had filled his command structure with weren't similarly flexible in their loyalty to the queen and princess. Once he had the time, of course.

* * *

True to his word, Bogo returned to Wilfrido's cell; the weasel was sitting on his cot looking rather glassy-eyed as he entered the room, but he immediately jumped to his feet as Bogo approached him. "Have you reconsidered?" Bogo asked, doing his best to sound uninterested in the answer.

"This jail is safe, isn't it?" Wilfrido asked, and it was certainly not the question Bogo was expecting.

"No one gets in or out unless I want them to," Bogo said, and the firmness of his voice was entirely unforced.

Successful breakouts from Oztoyehuatl's Jail were so vanishingly rare that not only had one never happened in Bogo's entire career with the City Guard but he couldn't even remember hearing about one happening in the last century or so. So far as he knew, no one had ever managed to break into the prison, either, although anyone who did would quickly find themselves up against some of the City Guard's most elite soldiers.

Wilfrido nodded slowly before looking back and forth, as if verifying that the room his cell was in was as completely empty as it looked. It was; the door that led to the corridor and the guard beyond it was closed, and the stone expanse of the room was barren except for the walls of his cell, his cot, the weasel himself, and Bogo. Wilfrido pressed himself up against the thick diamond wall, his quick and shallow breathing fogging it up a little. "Two or three months ago," he said, his voice a reedy whisper, "There was a mammal coming 'round my shop. Real suspicious-like, see?"

Bogo bent down until he was level with Wilfrido's head, which took quite a bit of doing; the weasel was rather short. "Suspicious how?" he asked, pitching his voice so low that it was barely more than a rumble.

Wilfrido's eyes darted around again, his mouth opening, and then closing, and opening again as he hesitated. At last, he brought one paw up to the unruly fur atop his head and futilely tried smoothing it out. "All in a cloak. Green one, hood up. Now, I keep my shop bright, even at night, you understand? It's good for business, see, if mammals can see the goods real clear. Honest, you know? Like—"

The weasel had started rambling, but he must have caught the expression on Bogo's face because he came to a sudden stop. "Hood up," he repeated, "But it was like... Like he didn't have nothing under it. Pitch black under that hood, even in the light. Like he didn't have a _face_."

Wilfrido shivered, and Bogo considered what he was describing. A mammal in a cloak that completely swallowed his face wasn't just unsettling; it didn't seem especially possible. It was like a story that calves told to scare each other, and yet the encounter seemed to have left its mark on Wilfrido. If he was lying, Bogo couldn't guess at the reason, and so he did his best to keep his voice even. "How tall was he? Could you tell his species?"

Wilfrido shook his head so rapidly it was as though it was on a swivel. "He didn't have anything showing under that cloak, milord. He was medium-sized, I guess, maybe four or five feet. But that voice!"

The weasel shuddered again. "Like nothing living, I'll tell you that. It was awful. Like... Like..."

Wilfrido seemed to be groping for a comparison that was escaping him, before he finally came up with, "Like two stones scraping together."

"But you're sure it was a male voice?" Bogo asked, and Wilfrido barely had to consider the question before shrugging.

"Maybe not," he said, "I never want to hear it again."

Bogo couldn't stop the frown that slowly spread across his face. It was a ridiculous story; during his days of walking the streets it had not been uncommon for mammals to make up obviously false stories in an attempt to avoid punishment for their crimes. Some of those stories had held much better veneers of plausibility than Wilfrido's claim; even a cihuateteo snatching up kits sounded more likely. And yet Bogo could not ever remember seeing a mammal believe their own story as much as Wilfrido seemed to believe his. It was either genuine fear in the weasel's eyes or he had suddenly become a much better actor in the few minutes that had passed since Bogo had left him to question Blanca. "What did he want?" Bogo asked at last.

"He wanted..." Wilfrido began, and when he continued his voice was even quieter.

"He wanted a blood magician to do something. Something difficult, he says, so he wants the very best. I says, I says it's a real compliment he's coming to me and he..."

Wilfrido swallowed hard before continuing. "He just laughs, see? This awful, awful laugh, and even when his head goes back—so it's right under the lights, see?—I still can't see nothing of his face. He says he doesn't want me to do it, but he hears I know mammals. And I do, milord, it's the gods' honest truth so it is, good business to—"

The weasel caught himself rambling even before Bogo's expression could change and stopped again. "And so I asks him, what's he need done? And he says that's none of my business, if I know what's good for me, just that it has to be a blood magician who would do anything for the right price. And not just any blood magician, either, but the best I know."

Wilfrido's voice was trembling with every word, but he plunged on, seemingly unable to stop himself. "And I says it might take an awful lot of money and he doesn't say nothing. He just slides a platinum piece across my counter—but I can't see if he's got paws or hooves, he's got these funny, how you call 'em, metal gauntlets on—and then he says it's mine if I give him a name."

"A platinum piece?" Bogo repeated, and the skepticism in his voice must have been obvious because Wilfrido began nodding vigorously.

Platinum pieces were much too valuable to be in common circulation; there just wasn't very much need for such large denomination coins. Bogo had gone his entire life before becoming captain general without so much as seeing one, let alone handling one, and he had certainly never had such a coin in his possession. The palace did occasionally have the City Guard transport them, and he had seen for himself how the silvery coins glowed with their own beautiful internal light that put the shining markings on any of the lower coins to shame. "I still have it in my shop, milord," Wilfrido said, interrupting his thoughts, and Bogo could feel his frown deepen.

It was the sort of detail the weasel would have been foolish to add if he was making the story up, and for all the platinum bangles he had decorated his torc with it was difficult to imagine him being successful enough to earn the equivalent of a platinum piece. "We'll want to see it," Bogo said, "Who did you name?"

"There's a tigress, milord," Wilfrido said, "A tigress in Phoenix. Valentina, her name is. Scares me a bit, if I'm being honest."

Bogo somehow managed to keep his face a perfect mask, despite his pulse suddenly seeming to run hot through his head, even though the name was one of the ones that Alfonso had also given. There had still been nothing from Phoenix, but it was certainly seeming to be increasingly urgent to get word back from there. "And..." Wilfrido continued, "The mammal... He said I shouldn't tell nobody he had visited me, not if I knew what was good for me. And I said I wouldn't but..."

The little weasel shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "He said if I did, the Queen's Council would see to it no one ever saw me again."

With that, Wilfrido sank to his knees, tears streaming down his face, as though telling the story had sapped him of all his strength. Bogo, meanwhile, could feel his thoughts suddenly shifting direction away from learning more about Valentina. Certainly any mammal who wished to appear intimidating could claim to be empowered by a member of the Queen's Council. But what if it was actually true? Had Cerdo, Cencerro, or Corazón actually sent Wilfrido's mysterious visitor?

Bogo repressed a sigh as he stood up to his full height, ignoring the sniveling form of Wilfrido on the other side of the cell wall. His first meeting as a true equal to the other members of the Queen's Council was certainly shaping up to be an interesting one.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

The word "cetl" is the Nahuatl word for "ice," which is why I chose it for the barony kept at freezing temperatures. "Osita" is Spanish for "little bear," a nickname that would have been ironic when Blanca was heavier in her youth. "Blanca," in addition to being a name, is Spanish for "white," suggesting her parents weren't very creative when naming her. The fur of polar bears can sometimes turn green, and the cause is indeed algae; it's most commonly seen in polar bears kept in zoos in warm climates.

There have been a few other references to how the structure of the city used to work before it was conquered, and in this chapter we see that there are mammals who wish that it was still the way it had been. I thought it would also be true to life that, even among mammals who oppose the existence of a monarchy, they aren't necessarily going to want a truly representational form of government.

Bogo's size is definitely emphasized in the movie, and with that size I figure he's got to be pretty heavy. In the real world, female polar bears top out around 650 pounds (about 295 kilograms), far short of a male buffalo (1300 pounds, or 590 kilograms). Since the two characters are almost the same height I think it helps indicate just how scrawny the bear is.

"Bosque" is Spanish for "forest," which seemed an appropriate family name for a wolf.

The cihuateteo, or "divine woman" in the Nahuatl language, was a sort of malevolent spirit that the Aztecs believed in. Their belief was that, if a woman died during childbirth, she would come back as a spirit and attempt to steal children. The Aztecs believed that childbirth was a sort of battle, analogous to what male warriors went through on the battlefield, and successfully giving birth to a child was a victory.

It's been previously established in this story that coins have glowing alchemical markings on them to demonstrate that they're genuine, and here that platinum coins actually glow themselves. In all cases it's not so much that the metal is precious—alchemy making it more or less trivial to make precious metals—but that it's a fiat currency with an agreed upon value. I drew the idea of platinum coins glowing from some of the things that have been done with high denomination coins in the real world. The Royal Canadian Mint, for example, makes coins of precious metal that have a holographic effect.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought!


	21. Chapter 21

Judy wasn't quite sure how she had expected Nick to react. Deny it, maybe, the same way he seemed to deflect any conversation that grazed too closely to his past. Make a run for it, perhaps, as unlikely as it seemed. What she was not expecting at all, though, was what he actually said. "Why didn't you come over, then?" he asked, "I could have introduced you."

"What?"

The question tumbled past Judy's lips before she could even think about it; she felt as though she had to look incredibly foolish. "I could have introduced you," Nick repeated, somewhat more slowly, "Despite what the lieutenant colonel might have you believe, there _are_ mammals who like me."

He certainly didn't have the look of a mammal caught in a web of lies; there was a little self-deprecating smile on his face as he spoke and if he was nervous at all Judy couldn't tell. "She's a... friend of yours?" Judy asked.

Perhaps it was because she had just spent a couple of days by his side virtually every waking hour, but the idea of Nick having friends struck her as odd in a way she couldn't quite put a finger on. It wasn't as though he was unfriendly—in her experience, it was quite the opposite—but that he always seemed guarded in a way. "You don't have to sound so surprised," Nick said, but there was not even a hint of annoyance in his voice, "Fermina's father and I go _way_ back. Oh, the stories she could have told you..."

He chuckled breezily, shaking his head, and kept walking. Judy, however, had about felt her heart stop when he had started saying the shrew's name; she had been so _sure_ that it would be Fernanda that she had almost heard that. If Nick noticed that Judy had stumbled a step, he didn't show it, continuing to easily move down the street. "Fermina?" Judy said, and to her own ears her voice sounded unnaturally high-pitched.

"Fermina?" she hastily repeated, and her tone sounded a bit more normal, "Are you sure that's her name?"

Nick actually came to a stop at that. The press of mammals making their way down on of Phoenix's more crowded side-streets flowed around them, and it seemed to take Nick no effort to avoid being jostled by the larger and more careless pedestrians. Judy, though, could feel mammals bumping into her, but the sensation seemed to be coming from a great distance. Her heart was pounding furiously, and she could feel it in the tips of her ears. Her mouth suddenly seemed full of something sharply metallic that had sucked all her saliva dry, and she realized that for a single moment she had been afraid that her worst, most implausibly wild possibility for Nick's involvement was right.

Nick cocked his head to the side as he looked at her. "Reasonably sure, yes," he said, "Why do you ask?"

"Well... There's..." Judy began, but she couldn't stop fumbling over her words, until they seemed at last to spill out of her far faster than she usually spoke, "Alfonso. Of the New Quimichin Barony, you know him? Not that you _have_ to know him just because he's a criminal and you're a—That is, I mean, of course you don't know him, right?—he was arrested a few weeks ago but his daughter wasn't. Fernanda, her name is. She—she was never caught. Now someone tried killing the princess and they must have been really skilled in magic to do that, right? And _Alfonso's_ a shrew and Fernanda's a shrew and your friend Fermina's a shrew and—and—I saw you talking to her and _giving_ her something and _you're_ good at magic and—"

"Are you asking me if I'm involved with Zootopia's most dangerous criminal in some kind of plot to kill the princess?" Nick interrupted.

He wasn't smiling anymore. His features seemed to have drawn up into themselves until all that was left was a politely neutral expression, like a mammal browsing a shop when they didn't know whether or not they were going to buy anything. "I— Yes," Judy said.

She could feel her ears heating up even as they began drooping. When he put it like that, it sounded completely absurd. But the worst of it was, he didn't sound angry at her. In fact, he didn't seem to be feeling anything. All the good humor had been gone from his voice as he stood, completely still, and asked his question, but there had been nothing else in his tone. "No, no I'm not," Nick said, and once more he seemed almost emotionless.

Before she could say anything, or even begin to formulate an apology, Nick clapped his paws and rubbed them together briskly, a smile suddenly lighting up his face. "Just goes to show there's no reason a bunny can't be just like every other member of the City Guard," he said, with a cheerfulness that Judy found surprising, "You've got a job to do, after all. Speaking of which, why don't we get this little errand over with so you can be back on your merry way?"

With that he set off walking again, more briskly than he had before. Even as she struggled to keep up with him, pushing through the crowd with far less ease, Judy couldn't help but be awe-struck by the view; they were very close to one of the great fissures that isolated Phoenix. There was only a high railing, made of sparkling multifaceted beams of diamonds that burst with color as they refracted the light of the rising sun, to separate them from a plunge into an abyss. Considering how she had just embarrassed herself by jumping to an apparently unfounded conclusion, the idea of being swallowed by such an abyss held some appeal, but Judy looked away to Nick's rapidly retreating back.

"Nick!" Judy called, rushing to catch up, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have spied on—"

Nick cut her off again, waving one arm absently. "I can tell you all about Fermina, if you'd like," he said mildly, although he didn't turn to look back at her.

"Being an alchemist is a useful skill, but not everyone's willing to hire a fox," he continued with hardly a pause, and Judy wasn't sure if she was imagining the emphasis he seemed to place on the last word, "Fermina's father, as a business mammal, recognized the opportunity for the both of us and I was able to help him from time to time."

For the first time since he had started speaking again, Nick glanced at Judy; a wry smile twisted his lips. "Nothing exciting, I'm afraid," he added, "Mostly just odds and ends that members of the Alchemist Guild overcharge for. Anyway, it was always Fermina's dream to become a messenger, but that's not an easy job or a safe one. I've heard of riders that get eaten by their mounts, you know."

Nick was speaking smoothly, just as he had on many occasions when they had been on the road together, and yet there was something different about it that Judy wasn't sure she could describe. Nick certainly didn't seem particularly upset that she had all but directly accused him of high treason, and yet things didn't feel the same. Maybe it had only been because, while they had been traveling, she had genuinely enjoyed his company and had thought he felt the same way. Now, it seemed as though he was in a hurry to be rid of her, even if he wouldn't say it. "Not that Tonaltzintli would eat her, of course. She has him too well trained for that, and even if he tried I expect she'd just cut her way out."

Nick chuckled at his own wit, and Judy was once more overcome with a sense of how close and yet so different his behavior was from what she had come to expect of him. If it hadn't been for the fact that he wasn't looking at her as he spoke, it might have almost felt normal. "Now, Fermina ran a few deliveries for her father's business, but on her last trip to Phoenix she and Tonaltzintli got attacked by a wild hawk. She was fine, but he was hurt pretty badly and was in no shape to fly back. Her father couldn't get his paws on a complete philosopher's stone—there aren't many mammals who can, really—and I can't exactly make one myself, but I could do the next best thing and bring it here."

"You brought her an incomplete stone," Judy said, her voice barely above a whisper, and her insides seemed to twist themselves into knots.

"Clever bunny," Nick replied with a nod.

Not only had she spied on a mammal who had been closer to being a real friend than anyone she had ever known, but he hadn't been doing anything wrong. He had, in fact, been using his rare and certainly hard-earned knowledge to help out the daughter of an old business partner, even though what she had heard of their conversation made her think Fermina's father and Nick were no longer on the best of terms. He, a fox, had been behaving about as nobly as it was possible for a mammal to act. And she...

"No, I'm not. I'm sorry," Judy said, and she could feel tears welling up in her eyes, "I—"

"Oh, don't worry about it," Nick said, and she might have been seeing what she wanted to see, but even only able to see his back she thought he seemed touched by the raw emotion in her voice.

That, or it was just making him uncomfortable. He did slow down somewhat, and he turned and offered her an elaborately embroidered handkerchief that had seemed simply to appear in his paw. "Most mammals don't even believe a fox alchemist is possible, you know," he said, "I'm very suspicious."

He waggled his fingers as he said it, and let out a rueful little chuckle that struck Judy as deeply bitter. She could only guess at what he had experienced in his life that had brought him to this point; it occurred to her, for the first time, that an alchemist as skilled as he was should be doing much better than traveling the length of the city-state entering bids for jobs. Nick could have been the court alchemist of a minor noble or a wealthy commoner merchant, even without a membership in the Alchemist Guild, and lived a life of leisurely patronage with all the funding for pet projects he could dream of. What did it say about him that he wasn't? It didn't seem as simple as him being uninterested in such a job, and Judy wondered what he had thought to himself as she had described the obstacles she had overcome to become the first rabbit to join the City Guard.

Judy gave a watery little laugh as she dabbed at her eyes. The handkerchief smelled like Nick, a scent like lavender mixed with something undeniably masculine and primal even if it was completely unlike any buck she had ever met, and she somewhat regretted not being able to keep it. "But not to Fermina," she said, "She's lucky to know you."

Nick grinned as he took his handkerchief back; for a moment it felt as though everything between them was exactly how it had been the previous night. But then Nick's face seemed to close on itself again—not entirely, but slightly, as though his good humor was no longer entirely natural—before he responded. "Every mammal who knows me is lucky to know me, Ensign Carrots," he said cheerfully, and Judy couldn't help but be cheered a little by his use of the nickname she hated.

"Could I meet her?" Judy asked, and before Nick had the chance to do much more than open his mouth, she hastily added, "Not because I want to ask her anything about secretly being Alfonso's daughter or anything. I'd just... like to meet her."

Nick smiled briefly, and it was his usual self-satisfied smirk, as though he knew something particularly amusing that no one else did. "Fermina _would_ probably find it all a funny story. But your opportunity to meet her has passed, I'm afraid. Tonaltzintli should have been back in flying shape hours ago, and she was going to leave Phoenix as soon as he was ready."

"Oh," Judy said, and she couldn't hide her disappointment.

It would have been nice to meet someone else who knew Nick. Not just to help show she had been badly off-track when she had suspected him of a heinous crime, but also to get a better sense of him. There was something about him that was just endlessly interesting in a way Judy had never experienced before, and it wasn't just when she had spent the previous night worrying about what to do that Nick had occupied her thoughts. "Maybe you can look her up once you're back in Zootopia," Nick said, "She is a very good messenger, if you ever need one. You must have about a thousand brothers and sisters to write to back in the Tochtli Barony, right?"

"I don't have _that_ many siblings," Judy protested, but Nick simply shrugged.

As they continued walking, he didn't speak again, leaving Judy alone with her thoughts. It had been ridiculous to assume that what had to be the most serious threat the royal family had faced in decades would simply fall into her lap, and Judy felt shame welling up once more, completely unbidden. She had spent the previous night nearly sleepless, agonizing over how to approach Nick and what she had overheard meant, but that hadn't been _all_ she had thought of. Some small part of her, no matter how much she had tried to ignore it, had spun out the fantasies of what it would mean if she had been right and she had caught a critical part of an assassination plot. She had imagined an immediate promotion to lieutenant, maybe even to captain, and the sort of glory and honors even the members of the Queen's Council could only dream of.

No matter how much Judy told herself that those things didn't matter compared to keeping Zootopia and the royal family safe, it would have been nice to be able to show, once and for all beyond any reasonable doubt, that bunnies could be valuable members of the City Guard. Still, she actually found herself more grateful than she would have guessed that Nick really did have a perfectly rational explanation for what she had seen and heard; if she had to prove herself the hard and long way that's what she would do. And who knew? Perhaps she could have more opportunities to be with Nick and—"Well now," Nick said, interrupting her thoughts, "We're nearly to the shop."

Judy looked around, but the part of Phoenix they were in didn't seem particularly special. In fact, it looked a little run-down. The buildings, although all made of white stone as seemed customary for Phoenix, had a nasty grimy appearance to them, soot turning them a dingy gray. The street had narrowed, too, and the crowds had thinned out; it looked especially seedy to her, an impression that was not helped at all by the mammals who walked past. The street traffic in the part of Phoenix they had found themselves in looked especially rough. She saw a stoop-shouldered camel, his arms covered with scars and scabs, shuffle past as he pushed a cart covered with dirty little stones that were nonetheless intricately carved. In front of a store, a grimy badger seemed to be playing a game of chance with a crew of equally filthy mice all with little brushes set down near the board.

At first none of the mammals made sense, and then suddenly they did. These mammals, she realized, were the ones who went down into the ruins Phoenix was built atop to salvage useful or interesting centuries-old trinkets, and some of them seemed to have paid dearly for it. In the dim shadows of an alleyway there sat a legless ferret, horrible scars visible on his chest through the tattered remains of his clothes. He simply stared ahead, silent and nearly corpse-like except for his occasional blinking, next to a crudely lettered sign that read, in three lines, "TEGUIXINCATL TOOK MY LEGS AND MY PARTNER. NEED MONEY FOR REGENERATION. ANYTHING HELPS."

Although he was the most dramatic example, he was not the only mammal who appeared maimed; Judy saw others with burn scars, missing fingers, and even one poor stoat with an arm that looked strangely withered. "Treasure hunting's even more dangerous than riding an eagle," Nick said in a low voice, giving Judy a nudge, "Come on, this way."

He led her off the main street and into a narrow alleyway that was completely empty, albeit filled with the powerful smell of rotting vegetables. "This book you want, it came from the ruins?" Judy asked in a whisper, despite how alone they were.

"Yes," Nick said briefly, "It's called the Golden Codex. You can remember that, right? It's about this big, this thick, and all the pages are gold."

As he spoke, he vaguely sketched out the dimensions in thin air of what would be a sizable book, at least for a bunny. "And it's made of gold?" Judy asked; she had seen her fair share of books, but never one made out of metal of any sort.

"Very thin sheets of it, yes," Nick said, "Anything printed on paper didn't survive the last few centuries."

Before she had the chance to do much more than wonder how many books had survived the cataclysm that had befallen Quimichpatlan Barony, Nick thrust a heavy fish leather bag into her paws that produced the musical clink of money. "Here, this should cover it. I'd go in with you, but I think he wouldn't sell it to you out of spite if I came along, the stubborn old goat. It's that shop there."

Nick pointed out a storefront that seemed noticeably cleaner than either of its neighbors, and Judy nodded. "I'll be right back," she said, and Nick smiled.

"I'll be waiting."

Judy made her way across the street briskly, climbing the creaking and splintered wooden steps that led up to a front door set deeply into the thick stone wall. When she opened the door, a little bell atop it jangled and she stepped into the gloom of the bookstore. It was rather poorly lit; the store didn't have any windows, and towering shelves and lopsided stacks of books seemed to block most of the light of the few alchemical torches that had been set into the walls. The air was full of the musty smell of old paper, but there was something else in it, something unpleasant and harsh. "Hello?" Judy called out, but there was no answer.

She took another step forward, carefully maneuvering around a pile of books each nearly as large as she was, but she still couldn't see the counter. The wooden floorboards groaned under her feet as she kept moving, until suddenly one of her feet was wet. Grimacing, more in annoyance than anything else, Judy looked down to see what she had stepped in.

At first, she told herself it was just ink. Just a spilled bottle of red ink, going somewhat tacky from drying. But there was a lot of it, a lot more than would be in anything but an elephant-sized bottle, and the liquid didn't have the splash pattern a dropped bottle would make, and ink didn't have a nauseatingly rich coppery scent. The puddle she had stepped in was, in fact, part of a massive streaky red mess flowing from near the back of the store where the floor wasn't quite level.

It was blood.

Judy tightened her grip on her spear, took in a deep breath, and called, "If there's anyone in here, this is the City Guard. This is your last chance to show yourself."

She strained her ears as much as she could, but all she heard was something slowly dripping. Judy took another step forward, keeping one paw near her quauhxicallis, and some isolated part of her mind noted how strange it was that she had been more nervous about confronting Nick than being on what had to be the scene of a murder. At first, as she got closer and closer to the back of the store, she wasn't sure what she was seeing. The source of the puddle was a lumpy mass, and once she got close enough Judy realized that it had been a goat, once upon a time, but it was barely recognizable as a corpse.

The poor goat seemed to have exploded from the ribs down, creating a mess of spongy bits Judy didn't want to think about that coated the floor and the walls. The goat's upper body had survived in better shape, but the gore of his terrible death had coated his head and arms and soaked into his fur. Despite that, an expression of terrible agony was visible on his face, and Judy was suddenly aware of her fur standing up stiffly from her body.

The goat had to be the shopkeeper Nick had mentioned wouldn't sell him a book, and he was unquestionably dead. Whether that had anything to do with the blood magicians that the Phoenix City Guard was looking for she couldn't even guess, but it was her duty to report it. Moving as quickly as she could in the dim light, Judy retraced her steps to the front door of the shop, but before she could even touch the handle it swung open with the chime of the bell on the top.

The sudden brightness of the light made it hard to recognize the mammal at first, but as her eyes adjusted Judy saw it was Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro. Behind him, sandwiched between two burly members of the City Guard, was Nick. His paws had been cuffed together and his head muzzled, and he hung limply like a puppet with its strings cut. Before Judy could call out to him, Cencerro spoke in a commanding tone. "Drop the spear, ensign."


	22. Chapter 22

After summoning a guard to search Wilfrido's shop for the platinum piece, Bogo stalked out of the jail and towards his waiting carriage with his mind whirling. He had two mammals, now, who had each independently pointed a finger at a blood magician named Valentina who lived in Phoenix. He didn't trust Wilfrido as far as he could throw him—well, that wasn't quite true; considering how scrawny the weasel was that implied far too much trust. Bogo didn't trust Wilfrido as far as _Wilfrido_ could throw him, and at the image it conjured up in his head his lip twitched slightly. In any event, he was more eager than ever to hear what Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro and his soldiers came up with in Phoenix; it seemed he finally had a very strong lead.

Not that it seemed to be reflected in the information he had on Valentina, though. Bogo flipped through the slim file as he walked, his frown creasing his face. The tigress specialized in feline quauhxicallis, which it seemed both would-be assassins had used. She lived in Phoenix, where it would be far easier to sacrifice a cheetah to make them than it would in the Inner or Middle Baronies. But no matter how he scanned through the file, Bogo simply couldn't see a motive.

Valentina had no direct relation to the sole line of noble tigers (excepting, of course, the possibility of illegitimacy), and didn't even have any kind of business connection to the noble lines of any other species. She had never so much as been questioned for anti-monarchy sentiment, either; Valentina didn't seem to have any vested interest in toppling the monarchy or somehow moving up the ranks of nobility. Her business was neither on the verge of collapse or extraordinarily successful, but there were some things that never showed up in official files. Of course, it was also quite possible that, as Wilfrido had suggested, the tigress was simply greedy and willing to do any blood magic requested of her if the price was right. For all Bogo knew, she might have a terrible gambling habit that she needed money to feed, but he wasn't getting anywhere by ruminating over it endlessly.

Bogo shook his head to clear it as he stuffed the file on Valentina back into its folder, and when he looked up saw an unpleasant surprise waiting for him. There, standing next to his carriage red-faced and looking somewhat abashed, was Lord Cerdo. The sight of the pig triggered a memory in Bogo that hit him like a metal pole. He stopped dead five feet from his carriage as the image flooded his head, almost as vivid as if it was actually happening, of when Jaime had been rushing down the hallway at them. In the instant right before Jaime had taken a massive swipe at Bogo's face, Cerdo had huddled to the floor, cringing as he turned his head away, and squealed, "Please, don't hurt us!"

Bogo still didn't remember anything after that, but considering the way his jaw still ached Jaime obviously hadn't listened. He shoved the memory aside; from his prior experience with concussions there was no telling if he would ever remember any more and he saw no point in dwelling on it. That Cerdo had been of absolutely no help was not a surprise; the pig had never served in the City Guard, and even if he had ever trained to fight it was obvious just from looking at him that he was rather soft. Of the three members of the Queen's Council (or, as Bogo mentally amended, the three _other_ members of the Queen's Council) Corazón was the only one who might have been any help.

If Cerdo had found Bogo's behavior odd, it didn't show. "Lord Bogo!" Cerdo said, and Bogo noted that the pig was puffing as though he had just sprinted over from somewhere, "Allow me to congratulate you on your elevation to the ranks of nobility."

Hearing the fussy pig call him "lord" almost made the whole mess that had come along with the title worth it. Almost.

"Thank you, Lord Cerdo," Bogo replied, accepting the lord's proffered hoof; for a pudgy little pig Cerdo had a surprisingly strong grip.

After pumping Bogo's hoof twice, Cerdo let go, grinning up at him awkwardly. "Please, forgive me Lord Bogo," he said, mopping at the short bristles atop his round head with a frilly handkerchief, "The guards wouldn't allow my carriage to approach, and..."

That would certainly explain why the pig was out of breath, at least; he was in incredibly poor shape to be winded after such a relatively short walk. "A security precaution," Bogo said, "Years ago, someone tried breaching the walls with explosives."

"Really?" Cerdo asked, sounding genuinely impressed, "How incredible!"

"It didn't succeed," Bogo replied shortly, "What brings you to Oztoyehuatl's Jail?"

Cerdo gave him that same awkward smile he had favored him with as he shook Bogo's hoof. "I... Well, I wanted to apologize for being useless."

There were many, many occasions Bogo could think of when the pig had been useless at best, but considering the memory that had just drifted up through his mind he knew what Cerdo meant. "You aren't a member of the City Guard," Bogo replied, "Protecting the princess isn't your responsibility."

"Well, no," Cerdo began, "However... I expect you don't know what it's like to be a coward, Lord Bogo."

Of all the things Cerdo could have said, that was about the most surprising. Hearing lords admitting to mistakes was rare as hen's teeth, and Bogo didn't think he had ever heard a lord admit to lacking courage. "I was terrified," Cerdo continued, and he didn't seem capable of meeting Bogo's eyes, "I know _I_ couldn't have done anything, but..."

He trailed off, rather lamely, and Bogo took a closer look at him. He had never particularly cared for Cerdo, but he supposed that the pig was extending an olive branch by admitting his weakness. They were, technically at least, equals now, and Bogo was sure he could use allies more than enemies as a full member of the Queen's Council. "You likely would have died if you had tried," Bogo said, and that was his own olive branch.

The pig might be a coward, but at least he admitted it. "You have nothing to apologize for," Bogo said, and Cerdo nodded gratefully.

"Thank you, Lord Bogo," he said, "There's a council meeting being called and I volunteered to collect you."

The pig's expression briefly darkened, as though a shadow was passing over it. "I didn't want to take any guards away from the princess," he said, with a shameful glance at the ground.

Bogo nodded and gestured toward his carriage. "We can take my carriage back," he said, and that was how he found himself riding back to the palace with Cerdo chattering away incessantly and yet saying nothing.

It was a mercy when they finally returned to the palace; Cerdo had first invited Bogo and his wife to a dinner party and then spent the next ten minutes explaining, in excruciating detail, how all of the guests were related and where the rare ingredients for each of the courses had been sourced. Bogo thought himself rather talented at ignoring distractions, but the pig's droning voice seemed to pierce his head, which was still aching from the lingering effects of how Jaime had hit him. As he unfolded himself from the carriage, Bogo thought back to what he had considered on the ride. He had enough evidence to suggest a conspiracy involving Jaime and Valentina, but did it extend any further? Cerdo's admittance of cowardice had made him think that Corazón's actions were rather more suspicious than he had initially thought. The lion was rather prideful, and likely would have thrown himself on his own sword before admitting to cowardice. He was also, unlike either Cerdo or Cencerro, a large and strong predator in excellent shape. A large, strong predator who never turned down the opportunity to play the hero when it came to politics but had apparently stood by and done nothing as Bogo nearly got his head knocked off his shoulders.

Bogo made a mental note to himself to follow up on the investigation he was having done into Corazón's potential linkages to blood magicians; if the lion was a co-conspirator he would happily arrest him while he still had the authority to do so. For the sake of thoroughness, though, Bogo set that happy thought aside and followed Cerdo through the palace. Rather unsurprisingly, considering the pig's substantial girth, he elected to take the lift rather than the stairs to get to the queen's suites. It made sense, from a safety perspective, to move the meetings of the Queen's Council from the traditional room, low in the palace, to the greater protection afforded by the royal suites.

Still, the break from tradition was somewhat disturbing, and even if everyone was at their usual positions just in a different room, it just didn't feel right to have a council meeting in an airy sitting room rather than the brooding council room. Of course, part of that might have been the guards that stood as grim sentinels by the door—four total, two on each side of the door—and part of it might have been that it was Bogo's first meeting as a full member of the council rather than just a representative of the City Guard. He and Cerdo were the last to arrive; Cencerro and the queen were in the middle of an earnest yet rather forced sounding conversation about the latest products for taking care of wool, which the princess seemed to be only half-paying attention to, her eyes continually darting to the door and windows. Corazón was sitting quietly, reading through a packet of papers he seemed to have brought with him. Before Bogo could catch sight of what they were, though, the lion slipped them into a sturdy-looking sharkskin case and looked up at him. "Now that we're all assembled," the queen said, breaking off her conversation as Bogo and Cerdo entered the room, "Allow me to formally introduce the newest member of my council, Lord Bogo."

None of the mammals in the room seemed particularly surprised; Bogo felt a pang of regret that he hadn't had the opportunity to see how any of them had reacted to the queen's decision. The princess applauded the announcement enthusiastically, and one by one the members of the Queen's Council joined in with significantly less spirit. "I am honored to serve, your majesty," Bogo said, inclining his head stiffly.

It was the traditional way for a new member of the Queen's Council to formally report in, and even if he was likely the first new member of the Queen's Council in centuries to make the statement anywhere besides the official chamber, it felt appropriate. "With that happy business addressed," the queen continued, "Lord Bogo, if you could please summarize the current standing of your investigation?"

Bogo exchanged a wordless glance with the queen, silently asking her if she was sure she wanted the entire council to hear it. She nodded slightly, and Bogo stood to address the others, hooves clasped behind his back. The queen, he noted, was paying far more attention to the other members of his audience than to him, and he realized what she was doing; she was seeing if anyone reacted. Unfortunately, so far as he could tell, no one did, and from how the queen's expression didn't change he guessed that she hadn't seen anything either. When he had come to the end of his recitation, Corazón was the first to speak. "A mammal with no face?" he said, and the skepticism in his voice was obvious, "Isn't it more likely that this weasel made it all up?"

"It could be some kind of alchemy trick," Cencerro cut in before Bogo could say anything, "Not that I'm an alchemist."

The little sheep chuckled slightly and seemingly nervously, and Bogo nodded. "I would like an alchemist to weigh in," he said.

"I'll ask Tomas," the princess said, seeming rather proud to be able to contribute.

"And as for your question, Lord Corazón," Bogo continued, "It is certainly possible. However, I don't think it's likely."

"You are the expert," Corazón replied, an insincere smile stretching across his face.

"Indeed," the queen said, and Bogo thought he heard a note of warning in it; certainly Corazón's smile vanished.

"I think—" the princess began, but there was a sudden knock at the door and everyone in the room jumped a little.

Bogo saw the insides of Cencerro's ears flush in embarrassment at having been startled, and even the queen's poise took a moment to reassert itself. The two guards on the inside of the door went through a rushed and quiet verification—Bogo heard the sign and countersign being spoken—before opening it. A breathless moose in the uniform of a City Guard lieutenant rushed in and saluted Bogo crisply. "Captain General, sir," the lieutenant said, "We haven't received any messages back from Phoenix."

Bogo frowned briefly. It was true that, by now, he should have received an acknowledgement that the Phoenix City Guard was actively looking for Valentina, if not a confirmation that Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro had taken her into custody, but communication with Phoenix wasn't always perfect. Caravans of supplies only went to the settlement every few weeks or so, banding together for mutual protection and to lower the shipping costs, and while messenger birds were much more frequent they were still too expensive to be really common. Besides, messengers sometimes got blown off course by heavy winds shrieking through the gap in the Outer Wall or attacked by wild hawks, but it was for those reasons it was the standard policy of the City Guard to send important messages with two independent messengers. Still, it wasn't entirely outside normal delays quite yet, and Bogo answered, "Thank you for the update, lieutenant. Let me know when we _do_ receive a message."

Bogo could remember being an eager-to-please lieutenant himself, and while the interruption to report that there was no news was mildly irritating, it certainly wasn't worth publicly dressing the guardsmammal down over. Rather than taking the obvious cue that he was being dismissed, however, the lieutenant shook his head. "Sir, you don't understand," he said, "It's been two days since _any_ message has come back from Phoenix."

"Two days?" Bogo repeated.

"Yessir."

For as long as Bogo could remember, at least one or two messenger birds had always made their way back from the settlement every day, even if it was only at the behest of one of the more powerful guilds. For Phoenix to suddenly be completely cut off... Bogo felt an icy sensation forming in the pit of his stomach. Something was deeply, deeply wrong, and he had no doubt it was connected to the mysterious blood magician Valentina and the attempts on the princess's life. "Assemble a recon squad and march them out to Phoenix," he said, barking the orders even as he thought them up, "Have them pay a messenger to go with them, whatever the cost. And pay a messenger to fly out there and come back, too. I want a report the _instant_ we know what's going on there."

The lieutenant saluted and dashed out of the room, and Bogo turned to look at the other members of the council. He had almost forgotten that they were present, but as he took in the stunned faces, the queen spoke. "Captain General," she said, her voice somewhat faint, "In the name of the gods, what's happening in Phoenix?"

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

I skipped the author's notes on my last chapter for dramatic impact, but I did have a few points to mention, so I'll get to those before the ones for this chapter.

The risk of being eaten by your mount does seem like a very real possibility if you're a shrew and ride an eagle. Indeed, considering how badly a horse can injure a human rider, it seemed realistic for it to at least be a concern; horses at least won't eat you.

Attempting to kill a member of the royal family is one of the go to examples of high treason in countries with a monarchy; depending on the reason for attempting regicide it might also hit a bunch of other charges of high treason like aiding a foreign power. All things considered, Nick takes the implied accusation remarkably well.

"Teguixincatl" isn't a real Nahuatl word, but is one that I made up by combining the words for a kind of lizard and spider. I figure that's the sort of creature of nightmares that you really don't want to face, and is simply one example of why venturing into the ruins under Phoenix is so dangerous.

Considering the type of magic that is available in this setting, I figured it made sense for the regeneration of lost body parts to at least be possible, albeit extremely expensive.

As mentioned in the notes for chapter 14, gold is an excellent material for making a long-lasting record. Of course, in chapter 14 it was Bogo who was in the royal library and saw books with gold pages; considering Judy is from a minor barony and is a low-ranking member of the City Guard, I thought it made sense for her to have never seen one before.

In a world where mammal leather is verboten, fish leather seems a practical substitute; it is possible to make and can be quite durable.

Anything more about chapter 21 would be spoilers, so I hope you'll understand as I now proceed to the notes for chapter 22.

One thing that the movie does show, that I've tried to capture as well, is that while Bogo is stern and unexpressive most of the time, he does have some depth, including a sense of humor. That he finds the idea of a weasel trying to throw him amusing is, I suppose, not the strangest thing about him.

The existence of alchemy seems like it would make explosives generally easier to create, and keeping strange carriages away from a jail seems like a fairly sensible precaution to me.

Cerdo did in fact admit to being wrong in chapter 10, as Bogo recalls in this chapter.

The chamber the Queen's Council meets in first appeared in chapter 2, where it was noted to be an old room low in the palace. Considering that an assassination attempt happened in that room, relocating to somewhere else probably seemed prudent.

Sharkskin can indeed be made into a sort of durable leather, which is typically called shagreen.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined to comment, I'd love to know what you thought!


	23. Chapter 23

Judy had never given much thought to what it would be like to be arrested. She had always done her best to obey the law, and had always, _always_ assumed that the City Guard would do its best to correct mistakes. The bad old days of the City Guard pulling mammals from their beds in the night for imagined crimes had been done for centuries; everyone knew that. The City Guard was unfailingly professional, she had always believed, and on the day she had received her golden torc Judy's heart had about burst from pride at finally being a member.

But as she had been dragged through the streets of Phoenix back to the barracks, her feet not even touching the ground as she was effortlessly hustled along by a guardsmammal three times her height who seemed totally deaf to her protests, that confidence in the City Guard began to waver. And when she had been unceremoniously tossed into a holding cell, Nick's limp body sprawling across the floor a moment before she hit it herself, she couldn't help but think that the terrible error that was being made would never be fixed.

Judy tried to push that awful thought aside, instead turning her focus to Nick. She grabbed him by the front of his robes and, with a grunt of effort, rolled him onto his back; he had landed in the cell face down and was surprisingly heavy. "Nick?" she asked, grabbing his head in her paws and pulling his face toward her, "Nick, can you hear me?"

Her voice cracked as she spoke and she felt hot helpless tears running down her face. Nick uttered a low and wordless moan, his eyes rolled back into his head so far she could only see the whites. Judy frantically ran her paws through the dense fur of Nick's head, desperately trying to find a bump or a bleeding wound; the words of one of her instructors passed unbidden through her mind. _Never_ ever _hit a mammal in the head unless you're willing to kill them_ , the gruff polar bear had said one day, _Or unless you want a vegetable_.

What if Cencerro and his guards had hit Nick hard enough that he'd never be the same? Was there a chance that he really had been reduced to—Judy shook her head fiercely and tried desperately to remember everything she had ever learned about head wounds, but no matter how she searched she couldn't find an injury to his head. "Hey!" she called out desperately, "He needs someone to look at his head!"

There was no response, but Judy hadn't really expected one. They had been brought down to a sub-basement of the barracks; although it was not unusual for barracks to have underground holding cells, she had never before seen a cell exactly like the one she was in. It was similar to the cells of Oztoyehuatl's Jail meant for holding alchemists, which Judy had toured once while still in the academy. Rather than being a thick box of diamond broken only by air holes too small for any mammal to get through, the cell had closely spaced prisms of diamond, each nearly a foot thick at their widest. Judy might have been able to get her arm through one of the gaps, but certainly not her head or the rest of her body, and she had no hopes of pulling the bars, which looked to be deeply sunk into the floor, apart. Unlike the cells in Oztoyehuatl's Jail, though, it actually had a door— _the Phoenix City Guard must not have any alchemists to make a hole in a solid wall_ , some distant part of Judy's mind told her—but it was just as solidly built of diamond as the bars and Judy had certainly never learned how to pick a lock. Like those cells for alchemists in Oztoyehuatl's Jail, though, there was a circle of glowing alchemical symbols surrounding the cell, about six feet from the nearest side, and Judy could feel the same sort of static tingle in her fur she had always felt when Nick performed alchemy of any kind. Beyond the cell, there was nothing else in the sub-basement; they had been brought to a level below the normal cells meant for normal mammals.

The glowing circle of the anti-alchemy array was the only light, palely illuminating stone walls smooth as glass that looked to have been carved out of the earth and just barely providing enough light to see the door that led to the stairs. Judy couldn't see or hear anyone else in the sub-basement with them, or keeping watch at the door; it felt as though they had been thrown into a pit and forgotten. "Please!" Judy yelled as loudly as she could.

There was no response. The sub-basement was almost deathly quiet, the stone walls and ceiling so thick that Judy couldn't even hear anything happening on the levels above them; the only sounds she could hear were her own rapid breaths and Nick's much slower ones. She took a deep and somewhat unsteady breath, forcing herself to focus. If no one else was going to come help, Nick needed her.

He didn't seem to have a head wound, but that didn't mean that he was uninjured; what if he had been stabbed and had passed out from blood loss? Judy roughly pulled Nick's robes open, and despite the seriousness of the situation had to immediately look away, her ears burning; the cream-colored stripe on the underside of Nick's muzzle went _all_ the way down. She forced herself to turn back toward Nick, firmly keeping her eyes focused on his chest as she ran her paws through the soft fur. She couldn't find any injuries or bloody spots, not even when she carefully rolled him onto his side to check his back. Judy closed his robes as best she could, having ripped some of the delicate buttons with how quickly she had pulled them open, and put one ear up against his chest. She had no idea just how fast a fox's heart was normally supposed to beat, but like his breathing his heart rate was incredibly slow.

Judy frowned as she considered what her examination of Nick had taught her, besides a visual she did her best to push out of her head. He didn't have a bump on his head or any cuts anywhere on his body. He seemed barely conscious and unable to move or respond; he had barely shifted at all while she had been examining him, and while he had moaned a few times it hadn't been anything resembling words. His heart and his breathing were both incredibly slow. Putting it all together, what did that leave? Poison, perhaps? If so, there wasn't anything she could do; she knew even less about poison than she did about head injuries. Still, her mind couldn't help but jump to the worst case scenario; had Cencerro dosed Nick with something slow-acting to give him an agonizing death? Nick didn't _seem_ to be in pain, but she couldn't tell for sure. She wasn't a healer of any kind, and for all she knew Nick was dying before her eyes.

Judy wasn't sure how long she waited, keeping her attention firmly focused on Nick, before anything else happened. There were no windows in the sub-basement or anything to tell the passage of time; it might have been hours that crawled past. Judy had tried keeping track of time by alternating prayers that Xolotl would see fit not to claim Nick with calls for someone to come look at him, but she lost count and couldn't remember how many repetitions of the cycle she had gone through. Her mind was starting to feel numb, as though by seeing first the dead body of the goat shopkeeper, and then being arrested and thrown into a cell alongside an unresponsive Nick, she had felt too much in too short a time and simply didn't have the energy for anything more.

Even her worry over Nick was difficult to sustain; he wasn't getting any better, but he wasn't getting any worse, either. His breathing remained regular, no matter how long the gap was between each breath, and he did occasionally twitch or moan. Judy tried to take it as a good sign, forcing down the dark thought that perhaps Nick would _never_ recover from how he was, but it was a welcome distraction when she heard the clop of hooves coming down the stairs.

Despite her excitement, Judy carefully lifted Nick's head off of her lap, where she had propped him up, and set it onto the floor as gently as she could. The cell they were in didn't have a pillow, or really much else in the way of contents; there was an incredibly uncomfortable looking cot with no padding, a chamber pot, and nothing else. She stood up, pulling her uniform tunic down to straighten it as best she could. That, at least, they had left her; although her armor, weapon, and everything she had carried on her had been confiscated, she still had her uniform and the torc that marked her as a member of the City Guard. She forced herself to stand at attention, and soon enough the thick door into the sub-basement opened noiselessly and Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro walked in alone.

Although she was dying to beg for help for Nick, Judy did her best to stay professional. All she had to do, she told herself, was demonstrate that it was a terrible mistake and she and Nick would be free to go. She was simply over-reacting, the way everyone expected a bunny to. Cencerro approached the cell, crossing the line of the anti-alchemy array but stopping about three feet short of the bars that separated them. "Ensign," he said, inclining his head.

To Judy, he looked and sounded much the same as when they had first met. His uniform was crisp perfection and his voice and face were both coldly emotionless. "Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro, sir," Judy began, unable to contain herself any further, but the sheep interrupted before she could get another word out.

"I do apologize for arresting you, ensign," he said, "You seem rather devoted to the City Guard. An admirable trait, although the company you keep leaves much to be desired."

The sheep's lip curled briefly as he glanced down at Nick. "Sir, there's something wrong with him," Judy said, the words tumbling quickly out of her mouth.

Any concern about clearing either his name or hers could wait until she was sure he would be alright, and she plunged on, "He needs a doctor, or a healer if there is one."

"There's no need for that, ensign," Cencerro said, "He was given a quauhxicalli made from sloth blood. Rather effective at incapacitating a mammal, wouldn't you say?"

"It's a quauhxicalli?" Judy asked, but she could feel warm relief flowing through her.

She hadn't even considered the possibility, but it seemed obvious in retrospect. She had heard of the most expensive quauhxicallis incorporating sloth blood to make the effects last longer, but had never heard of one deliberately intended to slow a mammal down. But then, maybe it was just how the Phoenix City Guard operated, considering the lack of functional torcs in the settlement. "Oh yes," Cencerro replied, "I would have preferred it to be poison, or perhaps a sword to the gut, but we all make do as best we can, don't we? Besides, the two of you will be dead soon enough."

At first, Judy thought that she must not have heard Cencerro correctly. It didn't make any sense that the commander of the Phoenix City Guard would speak so casually about murder, but his face was cold and grimly set. He wasn't joking, she realized; he really did mean every word he had said. "Then... Then why didn't you just killing us outside the bookstore?" Judy asked.

The question had simply come into her head and out of her mouth; none of her training had done anything to prepare her for the possibility that a superior officer would plan to kill her and a civilian. And for what? Cencerro wasn't making any sense, and for the sake of Zootopia as a whole, as well as for the sake of Nick's life and her own, she had to figure out _why_.

Cencerro laughed, and Judy had to repress a shudder. She had never before seen a mammal with such coldly merciless eyes; his face looked almost corpse-like. "There are proper forms to be followed, ensign. Not all of my officers are quite so loyal to me as I'd like. Killing a fellow member of the City Guard—even a bunny—would be a step too far. And they'd certainly never stand for an execution without a court martial, but there simply isn't the time or the evidence."

Cencerro frowned. "You had the poor luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was supposed to be a different officer bringing the alchemist in for his bid," he said, and his eyes turned again toward where Nick lay insensate and drooling on the floor of the cell, "Someone who would have already framed him before he even set foot in Phoenix."

He sighed, but to Judy it seemed more a theatrical touch than anything he really felt. "It _would_ have been satisfying to kill the fox myself, but in a few days both of you will be dead and none of this will matter," he said, "I do promise, though, that when I'm named Captain General of the City Guard, I'll tell your parents you died an honorable death in the tragedy at Phoenix. It'll be a comfort for them, don't you think?"

"You'll never be Captain General," Judy said with a vehemence she didn't feel.

Judy would have rather believed that Cencerro had gone mad than that he had become so corrupted, but Cencerro spoke each word with cold certainty, and at her words he smiled that awful smile again. "After Bogo's repeated mistakes, and my upcoming heroism, there won't be much of a choice," he said, "I'm already the frontrunner for the position, you see."

"You'll never be a hero, either," she said, and Cencerro simply stared at her.

His face had become a bland, unreadable mask, and she felt her skin crawl under her fur. The way that he shifted so rapidly from apparent shows of emotion to that awful inscrutable expression was somehow worse than either alone would have been. "You won't be around to see it," he said simply, "Goodbye, Ensign Tochtli, and give my regards to Nicholas."

With that, he turned and left, closing the thick door to the stairs behind him. Judy sank to the floor of the cell, her mind whirling with everything Cencerro had just said. What could he possibly mean by "the tragedy at Phoenix?" What kind of hero was he so confident he could be? She knew it was her duty to stop him, but by all the gods how was she supposed to do _that?_

* * *

It was sometime later when Nick became responsive again; over the course of perhaps an hour his movements started becoming more frequent and seemed more deliberate, and at last he sat up, rubbing gingerly at his head. "Nick!" Judy cried, and she wrapped her arms around him, "Are you alright?"

She couldn't help herself; after so much time spent alone with her own thoughts, her relief at seeing Nick apparently recovered was too great to be contained. "Fine," he said, although he sounded bewildered as he looked around, "Why are we in jail? What happened?"

Judy did her best to summarize everything that had happened; Nick's memory of events apparently ended shortly after she had entered the bookshop. She didn't think she told the story particularly well—in trying to tell him everything as quickly as she could, she kept stumbling over her words or diverting to tangents or asking him again how he felt—but Nick listened attentively, and when she had at last explained what Cencerro had said on visit, she came to a stop. "I'm really sorry," she said, "I was only following you because Cencerro ordered me to, and now—"

"You never could have seen _this_ coming," Nick said, cutting her off, "I certainly didn't."

He glanced around the cell, his features set in a frown, but Judy couldn't stop. "No, but I still should have trusted you enough to just talk to you when you were talking to Fermina," she said, "You weren't doing anything wrong and Cencerro was obviously just trying to—"

Nick squirmed in apparent discomfort at her show of emotion, putting a paw on Judy's shoulder as he interrupted again. "Let's forget about that," he said, "What do we do now?"

He sounded somewhat lost, and Judy couldn't blame him. He had gone from planning to put in a bid on a minor government contract to getting arrested as part of some inscrutable plot that could only involve the overthrowing of that government. Judy still had no idea how all the pieces fit together—was arresting Nick part of Cencerro's plan, or was it simply a bonus to his obvious grudge?—but she thought she knew enough to be sure that the attempt on the princess's life was somehow connected to whatever Cencerro was planning. She had no idea what that could possibly be, but from how he had phrased it she thought that at least some of the Phoenix City Guard was loyal to him and it wouldn't go well for the inhabitants of the settlement.

"We need to get back to Zootopia and warn Captain General Bogo that Cencerro is going to do something," Judy said.

It wasn't much of a plan, but it was all she could think of. Nick's skepticism was plainly written across his face as he considered her for a long moment. "No one's _ever_ escaped from one of these cells, you know," Nick said.

"No bunny ever joined the City Guard until I did," Judy answered firmly, "We're going to get out of here. I _know_ we can."

It didn't matter that she had absolutely no idea _how_ they would accomplish it, but her confidence in herself and Nick was unshakable. The simple truth, though, was that unless Nick knew how to pick locks, and happened to have a lock pick set on him that the guards hadn't confiscated, he had no way of opening the door. He couldn't do alchemy while they were in the cell and its surrounding anti-alchemy array, which seemed to be quite the obstacle to a successful escape. If the guards had left Judy her quauhxicallis—which they hadn't—she might have been able to at least try to force the lock, but she couldn't even do that much.

Nick was silent a moment, perhaps considering their situation as she was, and then suddenly laughed. "You know, Master Rogelio beat me for the contract on this cell," he said, shaking his head ruefully, "He had some words about the dangers of letting a fox design a... how did he put it? 'A cell he was bound to occupy someday.' And wouldn't you know? That miserable old porcupine was actually right about something."

He was smiling, though, and it brightened his entire face. It was nothing like his usual smirk, and when he spoke again Judy's heart leaped. "Rogelio's a good alchemist, but not a very clever one," he said, "Come on, Carrots, let's see what we have to work with."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

In works of fiction, hitting someone in the head is often seen as a harmless off button with no lasting effects. In real life, it's extremely bad for you to get hit in the head hard enough to get knocked out. It can easily cause permanent impairment if it doesn't simply result in death, and I've done my best to avert this trope in my stories. Bogo suffered a severe concussion as a result of the blow he took to the head, and without magic would have likely been in worse shape, and it speaks highly of Judy's instructors that they warned against attempting to temporarily incapacitate someone with a headshot.

Judy noting that she's not a doctor isn't a deliberate reference to my Sherlock AU series, in which Judy is indeed a doctor, but I suppose Dr. Hopps would have better luck coming to a differential diagnosis.

As has been previously established, the high security cells in Oztoyehuatl's Jail are hollow boxes of diamond without any doors; opening them requires an alchemist to make a hole. Considering that Phoenix is really on the outskirts of civilization, and alchemists are rare to begin with, I figured it made sense that they wouldn't be able to exactly copy the city-state's most secure cells.

Judy using a prayer in an attempt to tell the passage of time is a method that was actually pretty commonly used before clocks were accessible. Some old recipes, for instance, would give the time needed for a step, such as simmering or baking, in how many times the Lord's Prayer was to be said before moving to the next step. Xolotl was the Aztec god of death, Quetzalcoatl's brother and, interestingly enough, a canine.

Up until this point, all mentions of quauhxicallis in this story have shown their positive effects in granting mammals abilities they don't normally have or strengthening their existing ones. However, this chapter also shows quauhxicallis can be used to make a mammal weaker, in this case by using a sloth as the donor of the blood. Sloths do indeed have incredibly slow metabolisms, less than half of what a typical mammal their size would have. I figure metabolism greatly influences how long a quauhxicalli lasts; ones that dramatically increase a mammal's speed and reaction time lasting only minutes while one that dramatically slows them down lasting hours.

Court martials go back centuries, and in many countries the military system of justice is separate from the civilian judicial system. This chapter suggests that such a division exists in this setting, and that as a military officer Judy would be tried by a court martial for any crimes she committed.

This chapter also indirectly answers a question that was asked earlier about the anti-alchemy arrays used to contain alchemists. The circles only prevent alchemy from working, not quauhxicallis; Judy notes that if she had hers she could at least try something.

Judy's thoughts refer to the "attempt" on the princess's life rather than "attempts" because she only knows of one; the information regarding Jaime's attempt did not make its way to her. Both storylines have critical information that the other doesn't, and I hope you'll enjoy seeing how things proceed as they progress toward the point where they finally intersect! As always, thanks for reading, and if you're so inclined as to comment I'd love to hear what you thought.


	24. Chapter 24

An unfortunate truth Bogo had learned early in his career was that there was simply never enough time for everything that needed to be done. Even a full day after learning that all communication with Phoenix had been severed, Bogo still hadn't left the palace. Or slept.

He had holed up in his office, coordinating the flow of the City Guard and drinking mug after mug of cacahuatl until the jitteriness of his eyes overcame the dull pressure building behind them. Bogo was exhausted, bone-weary in a way he couldn't remember ever having been in his youth when it had seemed as though his reserves of energy were infinite, but still he pressed on. After dispatching the two teams he had assigned to travel to Phoenix and report back, he had called for all the information that could be assembled about the last mammals to go to or return from the settlement.

The answers, unfortunately, were rather thin. Messengers to and from Phoenix were relatively rare, but there were enough of them that tracking down the most recent visitors to Phoenix was proving difficult. And that was only the official messengers who paid the taxes assessed on correspondences; Bogo was not foolish enough to believe that there weren't some unlicensed messengers who belonged to no official guild. No matter how much the City Guard tried to clamp down on those unlicensed messengers, there were always those who could slip through the cracks. Birds were simply too capable, especially when paired with an experienced rider, of getting past any kind of observation. The solution Bogo had proposed, shortly after becoming Captain General, had been to add stricter licensing requirements for aviaries within the city walls; if he couldn't stop messengers from sneaking into the city he would simply prevent them from hiding their birds once they had done so.

Bogo didn't believe for a moment that the city was completely free of unlicensed aviaries, but his measures had seemed to greatly reduce the number of covert messengers. _Or_ , he thought with a sigh as he flipped over to the next report on his desk, _they just got better at hiding._ In any case, he had dispatched members of the City Guard to both the Messenger's Guild and to the three officially licensed aviary guilds, but none of them had turned up anything yet. The last few messengers who had successfully returned from Phoenix reported nothing out of the ordinary, and Bogo had authorized a reward for anyone capable of tracking down messengers who had gone missing. There were only three officially licensed messengers—a male mouse, a female vole, and a female jerboa—who had yet to be accounted for. They might be trapped in Phoenix, or drinking away their pay in Zootopia for all Bogo knew, but it was a better lead than none at all.

Other than messengers, there was a recently returned merchant caravan that had arrived in Zootopia without incident, and another caravan was due to depart Phoenix Bogo somehow doubted would make it. There was, however, one more scheduled trip to Phoenix that he couldn't help but find particularly interesting. A member of the City Guard—Corazón's prized example of a non-traditional mammal succeeding in the academy, he had noted with a scowl—had been dispatched to escort an alchemist to put in a bid on a water purification project. An alchemist who was a fox and obviously not a member of the Alchemist Guild. Bogo couldn't help but wonder if the oddly matched pair had some kind of significance in whatever was going on. Was this Judy of Tochtli Barony secretly loyal to Jaime and whoever else the jaguar was working with? A bunny who had managed the extraordinary feat of graduating at the top of her class from the military academy could be a valuable asset, he had to admit. She would be weak, feeble in a real fight and likely too emotional to be much help in a crisis, but what could she manage to do with the access membership in the City Guard gave her? Somehow prevent Phoenix from communicating at all, perhaps?

Then again, perhaps it was the fox who was the real culprit. Judy of Tochtli Barony, Bogo noted, had been a last-minute replacement for a more experienced member of the City Guard who had fallen ill shortly before his scheduled departure. Unfortunate timing, perhaps. Or perhaps someone had wanted to make sure that the fox had a meek and easily overpowered member of the City Guard at his side; perhaps the fox had even poisoned Phoenix's water supply in the course of submitting his bid. There was next to no information on Nicholas of the Middle Baronies; he hadn't even taken a family name or the name of a barony for his own. Nicholas had demonstrated sufficient talent, at some time years ago, to officially qualify to be considered for government alchemy contracts, but if he had any existence outside of that there was no record. He had never been arrested, or questioned, or even forced to explain how a fox had come to know the secrets of alchemy.

Or perhaps the presence of a highly suspicious fox and a nearly equally suspicious bunny was just a coincidence. Then again, the bunny would have never become a member of the City Guard without the ludicrous "reforms" Corazón had pushed through. Was she working directly for the lion on some kind of scheme?

Bogo lifted his reading glasses and rubbed at his eyes; he didn't seem able to keep the words on the pages of the reports he was reading in focus anymore. His thoughts kept running in circles, going around and around as he tried to cudgel his tired brains into coming up with a new angle to look at things from. Bogo looked back down at the report, and for a moment had a daydream of the time when his career had just started and never involved this sort of detective work.

It was a pleasant thought, but Bogo was startled out of his reverie by a loud knock at his office door. The voice of a guardsmammal, somewhat muffled by the thickness of the door, came through. "Captain General Bogo, sir, there's someone claiming—"

"Is it the queen?" Bogo interrupted, more than a little testily.

He had left specific orders about when he was to be interrupted, and it certainly wasn't to humor random mammals.

"No, but—" the answer began, but Bogo cut the guardsmammal off again.

"Is it the princess?" he asked.

"Well, no, but—"

"Then tell them to leave a message and go away. I'm very—"

Before Bogo could finish, he found himself cut off by the sound of his office door being knocked off its hinges and loudly falling to the floor. "Samuel!" a very familiar voice thundered, "Is that any way to talk to your wife?"

Maria stood in the doorway, a fine cloud of dust settling from the ruined door around her. She was almost as tall as Bogo was, and just as solidly built; Bogo could never understand the nobles who preferred their wives (or mistresses) waif-thin. Her nostrils were flaring with emotion, her dark brown eyes narrowed in a face streaked with far less white fur than his own. She did have, Bogo noted, a new platinum torc at her neck, but she was still wearing one of the plain and simple dresses that she favored; Maria had always said that nice dresses were wasted on schoolteachers with young charges. At her sides, and absolutely dwarfed by the angry buffalo, two guardsmammals had futilely grabbed her wrists.

Bogo knew that if Maria wanted to enter, a horse and a zebra wouldn't be able to do anything to stop her, and quickly gestured for the guards to release her. "If my wife had been an assassin, I would already be dead," he told the guards dryly.

"Don't think that still isn't a possibility!" Maria snapped, pointing one massive finger at him.

"You write me these little notes," she continued, holding up the crumpled pages like an accusation as she strode into his office, "But you're not _saying_ anything. When they showed up with this shiny new torc, I thought they were coming to say you _died_ saving the princess!"

Her chest heaved with emotion, and the two guardsmammals behind her seemed to be doing their best to blend into the wall of the corridor. "Be more thorough with the security next time," Bogo snapped at them, "Anyone could have claimed to be my wife."

"As if anyone else would _want_ to," Maria muttered, just loudly enough to be heard.

"And get someone to fix the door," Bogo finished, and the guards vanished down the corridor just about instantly.

"Is that all you have to say?" Maria asked, a frown darkening her face as she crossed her arms.

"I'm sorry," Bogo said, quietly, "You're right. I should have written more. Or called for you. It's—"

He never got the chance to finish. Maria had run across the room and pulled him into the tightest hug he could ever remember. She kissed him forcefully, and then rested her head on his shoulder. "Never scare me like that again, Samuel," she said fiercely, her mouth right against his ear, "Never."

Their embrace couldn't have lasted more than half a minute, and it was nowhere near long enough. Bogo wished he could have stayed there forever, his wife warm and comforting in his arms and against his chest, but he couldn't, and he gently disengaged himself. "It's a bad one, Ria," Bogo said, "The worst I've ever been on."

It was one of the little shorthands of their marriage, just as Ria was his pet name for her. Duty demanded that Bogo not share anything from his work that had any potential to compromise security. In the absence of details, Maria had taken to asking if he was working on a "bad one." Even without being able to say much more than yes or no, it somehow helped keep the work manageable, knowing that there was someone who cared so deeply about him that she'd be his sympathetic ear even when he couldn't say anything about what was bothering him.

"So it's true what the papers are saying?" Maria asked, and there was a slight anxious edge to her voice, "Someone really did try killing the princess?"

"And she really did give a direct address," Bogo said, nodding.

Maria was silent a long moment, and then she stretched out her hooves and put them at his sides. It wasn't quite a hug, not with nearly two feet between them, but the feel of her was still welcome. "You're not going to figure this out if you're too tired to think straight," she said at last, "Look at you!"

She ran one finger gently across his face. "You look like you've aged about five years since I last saw you," she said, and from the worry Bogo saw in her eyes he didn't think she was exaggerating; he had always appreciated her tendency towards bluntness, and had only grown to appreciate it more after spending so much time working around so many mammals who would do anything they could to avoid simply saying exactly what they meant.

That was what it all came down to, really; torcs could keep mammals from directly killing or hurting each other, but they couldn't keep mammals honest. As his immediate predecessor as Captain General had been fond of saying, as long as mammals lied, there would still be a need for the City Guard. There was something about that old memory that seemed to catch inside his head, and Bogo spoke before he realized what he was going to say. "Suppose you had a student steal something from one of the others," Bogo said, "But you can't find what was stolen and everyone says they didn't do it. How would you handle it?"

Maria laughed. "You want to treat the most powerful mammals in Zootopia like naughty calves?" she asked; clearly she saw the point he was getting at.

"Your students might be better behaved," Bogo replied, "But what would you do?"

Maria thought a moment. "I could punish the entire class until the thief confesses," she said, "Make them work it out themselves."

Bogo grunted. It would be extremely satisfying to simply arrest his prime suspects, but that was one way in which nobles had an advantage over students. "Suppose the thief could pay someone else off to take the fall for them," Bogo said.

"Then I wouldn't have to figure it out, would I?" Maria asked.

"What?" Bogo asked; he had a vague inkling of where she was going, but he was too tired to figure it out.

"If the thief paid someone to take the blame for them, I wouldn't know I had the wrong student, would I? Not unless the calf who confessed obviously couldn't be the thief."

Bogo had seen both Jorge de Cuvier and Jaime attempt murder, so he knew that they were at least perpetrators if not the masterminds. "Of course, it might also help to figure out why the thief stole what they did," Maria continued when Bogo remained silent, "And what they were expecting to do with it once they had it."

That was the piece that Bogo was struggling with as he turned ideas over in his head. What was the endgame of the mammal trying to kill the princess? Was it a direct grab for power? Or was it an indirect attempt? Perhaps someone was trying to frame someone else for a terrible crime simply to get them out of the way. Bogo considered his top suspects again. With the added complication of whatever had happened to Phoenix, Cencerro had become somewhat more suspicious in his mind; the commander of the Phoenix City Guard was her cousin, after all, and Diego Cencerro's knowledge would be incredibly valuable to any attempt to shut the settlement down. One of the last mammals to enter Phoenix—quite possibly the last, depending on what had happened—had been the City Guard's first rabbit officer, who never would have been able to join the City Guard without Corazón's influence. There was also how, in the last attack, Corazón hadn't lifted a finger to help. Bogo had interviewed all three of the nobles who had been witnesses, and what they said matched up with what little Bogo remembered. Cencerro had claimed to be too weak to do anything against a jaguar. Corazón said it happened too quickly for him to react.

And then there was Cerdo.

Cerdo, who had admitted to becoming paralyzed by fear. Cerdo, who had the sort of humility and ability to admit his own mistakes that was quite rare for a noble. He had no obvious connection to anything that had happened, but was that because he was innocent or because he was guilty and carefully cultivating his impression? Bogo didn't think the pig had it in him, but—"From the look on your face, I don't think I'm saying anything you haven't already thought of," Maria said, interrupting Bogo's thoughts.

Bogo repressed a yawn. "I'm thinking," he said at last, "Of the indirect paths."

Maria raised an eyebrow, but Bogo suddenly felt more certain that he was thinking about the problem the right way. What mattered were the things that only the guilty party could have done. The mysterious quauhxicallis made from the very life of a cheetah, for instance. With Phoenix suddenly having gone dark, Bogo felt more convinced than ever that the work had been done in Phoenix, which gave him a blood magician who Diego Cencerro should have arrested. But what if there was a reason he couldn't?

Bogo felt the pieces suddenly start clicking into place in his head. The connection between Diego Cencerro and Alba Cencerro was an obvious one that pointed in the ewe's direction as being involved. But if Lady Cencerro really was the guilty party, would she allow so obvious a connection to exist? He felt she was too clever for that. And if she was being framed, who was best positioned for that?

Who else but Lord Corazón? Unlike either Cencerro or Cerdo, the lion had significant investments associated with blood magicians. Was it so hard to believe he could have used those connections to find a particularly amoral one to do his dirty work? Corazón was also the only predator on the Queen's Council, and while he spoke loftily of cooperation between predator and prey, was it so difficult to believe that it was all a sham? Bogo had always been suspicious of the lord's mannerisms, which always struck him as supremely fake.

And then there were the last two pieces: the bunny member of the City Guard and the fox alchemist who would have both happened to have arrived in Phoenix right before it went dark. The bunny had an obvious connection to Corazón, and it didn't take much to imagine that a fox who had learned alchemy would have fairly flexible morals. Everything pointed perfectly in Corazón's direction, Bogo felt, everything suggesting that the lion was to blame. Or was it too perfect? Was it all a frame up?

"You're glaring at your desk like it owes you money," Maria observed, and Bogo briefly wondered how long he had been lost inside his own thoughts.

"You know," Maria observed, tapping one thoughtful finger against her lips, "There's something else I could do if I suspected a student of stealing something."

"What's that?"

"Make them think I already _know_ that they're guilty."

An idea began taking shape in Bogo's head. He would have to be careful, of course; he'd only have one shot at it, and he'd have to arrange things so none of his top suspects knew what he was going to do. "Now there's the smile that I love," Maria said, curling an arm around Bogo's shoulder and drawing herself close, "It's just a shame I don't get to see it very often."

"I have an idea," Bogo said.

Maria chuckled. "Going to treat the lords and ladies like naughty students after all?" she asked.

"Something like that," Bogo said, stifling another yawn.

"You're in no shape to try anything now," she said, and suddenly she was pushing him away from his desk.

"You have a cot in here, don't you? You need to get some sleep before you try anything."

"I—" Bogo began, but she cut him off.

"The city isn't going to fall apart if you sleep for a few hours. I promise I'll wake you up," she said, smiling once he gave in and pushed aside the tapestry that hid the entrance to his small personal chamber.

It occurred to Bogo that it was the first time Maria had ever entered the little room; she had almost never visited him at the palace, and there had certainly never been a reason to show off the painfully utilitarian cot and bathroom. "You know what?" she asked once they were both inside, "That cot looks about the perfect size for two."

Bogo couldn't help but look first at her, then at the cot, and then back at her. It was uncomfortably small for him; two buffalo would be extremely cramped on it. "It does?" he asked, unable to keep the skepticism out of his voice.

"It does."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

"Cacahuatl" literally means "cacao water" and was perhaps the earliest form of chocolate beverage. It consisted of hot water mixed with ground cacao beans, often with other flavors added for taste. Chocolate is a stimulant, but it's definitely not a substitute for sleep.

Taxing messengers for revenue is, I suppose, not too different from how stamps are used on physical mail in the real world.

A convoy scheduled to leave Phoenix was mentioned in chapter 15; here Bogo expresses his skepticism that any such action will occur.

After several chapters of being mentioned in passing, Bogo's wife finally shows up. I had a lot of fun writing her, and I hope she makes an entertaining character to read. She also finally reveals that Bogo does have a first name that simply hadn't been used by anyone else yet.

Bogo's cot was mentioned back in chapter 14, where he noted that it was just ever so slightly too small for him to sleep comfortably on.

One of the things I've enjoyed writing a mystery in this fashion, with multiple viewpoints, is that it provides a lot of great opportunities for showing the puzzle from multiple angles. Thank you for reading, and if you're so inclined as to leave a comment I'd love to know what you thought!


	25. Chapter 25

It hadn't taken long to take stock of their supplies; the cell had been completely empty except for the chamber pot (which was, mercifully, itself empty and quite clean) and the cot, which was solidly made of pegged-together pieces of wood. The cot was topped with a cushion so thin that it was barely more than a padded piece of cloth, and there was no pillow or sheets to go with it. Judy's own belongings amounted to the clothes on her back and nothing else; she felt a pang of regret when she realized that the little golden carrot Nick had made her had been seized.

Once they had finished their search of the cell, Nick had pulled at his robes, an expression of displeasure coloring his face. "Did they drag me here on my stomach?" he asked, "Half my buttons are broken."

Judy had felt the insides of her ears burning and coughed awkwardly, but she was spared having to explain that she had done the damage to his clothes in her attempts to see if he was injured when Nick simply heaved a sigh and sank to the floor of the cell, still fidgeting with one button. "It shouldn't be too hard to get out of here," he said at last, still playing with the broken button, and Judy immediately forgot her prior embarrassment as she sat on the floor next to him.

"Really?" she asked, her ears perking up, "Can you pick the lock?"

He had given it only the most cursory of looks; Judy had examined it more closely despite her complete lack of experience in how to break locks. To her inexpert eye it looked incredibly solid, the case made out of some dully metallic alloy with an oddly squiggly keyhole so thin she couldn't even slip a nail into it. Not that the keyhole had been easy to reach; her paw just barely fit between the gaps in the diamond bars that defined the cell and she had to bend her wrist awkwardly to grope at the lock to get a sense of it.

Nick simply chuckled. "There's generally not much of a need for alchemists to pick locks," he said dryly.

As he spoke, he succeeded in pulling the broken button off his robes, and he rolled it around in his fingers. Judy could see his point, though; if it wasn't for the anti-alchemy array she supposed it would take him less than a minute to simply transmute a way out. It seemed to follow, then, that if he wasn't going to pick the lock he was going to somehow disable the anti-alchemy array, and she stared at it from between the bars, trying to figure out what he had seen. The array simply glowed serenely from the symbols and lines in the floor; to Judy it looked as solid as the lock. "But it won't come to that," Nick continued, "I was right about Rogelio, though. You see what he did?"

Nick gestured in the direction of the anti-alchemy array, and Judy's gaze fruitlessly followed to what he was indicating. "I don't know what I'm looking at," Judy admitted, and some of the old impishness seemed to go back into Nick's features.

"Then it's very lucky for you that you're sharing a cell with a particularly clever fox," he said, puffing up his chest a little, "Rogelio made a very basic anti-alchemy array. Nothing even slightly tamper proof. Remember what happened when we were sparring and you broke my circle?"

Judy did. Nick had recovered almost instantly, but when he had reached out for his magic nothing had happened. "But how are we going to break the circle?" Judy asked, and Nick held up the button he had been playing with.

"With this," Nick said, rather triumphantly, and Judy looked from the button to the anti-alchemy array and back to the button.

The button held a diamond at its center, the metal surrounding it a bit battered. "How are we supposed to break the circle with that?" Judy asked, "Neither one of us—"

Nick was looking in the direction of the cot, and Judy cut herself off as she realized what he was planning. "So we break up the cot, tie the pieces together with the diamond at the end, and you scratch out a part of the circle?" Judy asked, and Nick nodded his approval.

"Almost as clever as I am, Carrots," he said modestly, "But it'll be _you_ scratching out part of the circle. My arms don't fit through the bars."

Judy laughed, and she couldn't restrain herself. She reached over and hugged him tightly. "Thank you," she said, and Nick coughed, rubbing at his muzzle with one paw.

"Despite the company, I don't want to be here anymore than you do," he said, "Now come on, you've got a lot of work ahead of you."

Breaking up the cot turned out to be one of the more difficult parts of Nick's plan; whoever had built the cot had done an excellent job, and in the end it took both of them levering the cot up against one of the diamond bars to pull the pieces apart. Judy's paws were sore and smarting when they finished, but in the end they had the legs of the cot securely lashed together with strips Nick tore from the hem of his robe. Nick took care of fastening the diamond at one end of their make-shift pole, first using one of the hard corners of a cell bar to cut a narrow groove in the wood and then delicately unraveling some threads from his increasingly tattered-looking robe to tie it in place.

When Judy pushed her arm as far as it would go through the bars, holding the pole as close to one end as possible, it was just barely long enough. But it _was_ long enough, and Nick's instructions were rather simple. All she had to do, he had said, was make a break anywhere in the circle, and it would stop working. Once he could perform alchemy again, it'd be trivial for him to get them out. And so, although it had taken what had felt like days of effort (and more realistically had been about three hours) to even get ready to begin the scheme, Judy began scratching away at the floor as quickly as she could.

* * *

"You know, there's something that's been bothering me," Nick said, "Besides being locked in a cell without food or water, I mean."

The work with the stick was mind-numbing, and Judy wasn't sure how long she had been at it, but her paw had gone almost completely numb and her shoulder ached from pressing it against the bars. Nick had busied himself preparing for his contribution to their escape; in the center of the cell he had started drawing out alchemical symbols with his own blood, obtained by pressing a finger against his sharp teeth. It had been the first time he had spoken directly to her since they had started; he had been muttering to himself, but the bits Judy caught didn't make any sense to her.

"What's that?" Judy asked, taking a break from her work.

Nick had spoken the words lightly enough, but Judy thought she understood him well enough to know that he wasn't quite joking. "Why did Cencerro tell you anything?" Nick asked, "He said we'd both be dead in a few days—no food or water _does_ tend to do that—so why bother?"

Judy frowned. It was, she had to admit, an excellent question she hadn't considered. "To gloat, I guess?" she hazarded, and Nick shook his head.

"You don't know Cencerro the way I do," he said, and there was a wealth of meaning in how he said the words.

"Maybe you didn't know him as well as you thought."

"Maybe," Nick said, and the word was almost a sigh as he looked down at his own work.

"Why did he hate you so much, anyway?" Judy asked.

To her, at least, Cencerro's distaste for Nick had seemed far more personal than simply loathing foxes specifically or predators generally could explain. Nick took a minute to consider the question, which Judy used to attempt to massage the life back into her paw. Although Nick had been rather dismissive of the quality of the alchemy Rogelio had used to create the anti-alchemy array, the array itself was relatively wide and even with a diamond it was slow going to break it.

"Because he couldn't do anything about me," Nick said, and there was a slight smile tugging at his muzzle, "It drove him crazy, you know. Here was this fox, obviously up to something, but his honor wouldn't allow him to arrest me without evidence. Of which there never was any, of course."

"Of course there wouldn't be," Judy said, "You never broke the law."

Perhaps it was just her imagination, but Judy thought Nick avoided her eyes for a second. She might have just embarrassed him; her heart had gone out to him and he must have been able to hear the emotion in her voice. It wasn't fair for Cencerro to use the City Guard's resources to harass Nick simply because he was a fox; it went against everything she believed as a member of the City Guard. "He was obsessed with the law," Nick said thoughtfully, "I can't imagine what it would take to make him conspire against the throne."

"Maybe he thought he'd be writing the laws soon," Judy suggested, and Nick shrugged.

"His cousin _is_ part of the Queen's Council," Nick said, "Along with the friend to all mammals and the torc heir."

Judy knew exactly who the other two mammals were that Nick was referring to; Leodore Corazón was always in the news for some initiative to help others and Esteban Cerdo's father had been perhaps the most successful merchant Zootopia had ever seen. "Do you think someone on the Queen's Council is involved?" Judy asked; considering that she owed her career to Corazón she couldn't help but hope that the lion was uninvolved in whatever Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro was a part of.

"If one of them is, his cousin would make the most sense, don't you think?" Nick asked, and Judy nodded her agreement.

She took up the stick again, pushing her concerns aside, and continuing her work. When they had started, Judy had worried that a guard might come into the sub-basement and observe what they were doing; she had listened as hard as she could after the incredible racket they had made pulling the cot apart. But the hours had gone past without any kind of interruption, and Judy supposed that Cencerro meant for them to starve or die of dehydration in the cell. Or perhaps something faster but less pleasant; for all she knew Cencerro had re-discovered the secrets of alchemy that had been used to blast the Outer Baronies into wastelands and was going to completely destroy Phoenix and everyone in it.

Whatever the case, Judy had been emboldened by the continued lack of any sort of oversight and had started working faster, falling into a monotonous routine that was broken only when the diamond she had been using had worn too much to be of any use and Nick had to replace it with one from a different button. With a fresh diamond she had gone right back to work, her lips peeled back and her brow furrowed as she concentrated on staying in the shallow groove she had created. Getting started had been the hardest part, and it had taken hours to notice any kind of defined spot where her cutting edge ran smoothly. But the spot was there, seeming to dance in her vision as she stared at the spot in the glowing circle and tried not to squint or blink in the light it threw off. She was so intent on her work, in fact, that she didn't notice at first when the light suddenly winked out and plunged the sub-basement into near total darkness.

When Judy stopped, her arm felt as though every muscle in it was complaining; even relaxing her grip to let go of the stick took far more effort than it should have. "I knew you could do it," Nick said cheerfully, clapping one friendly paw on her numb shoulder, "Now what do you say we get out of here?"

"Let's do it," Judy said, and he nodded.

Nick placed his paws against the simplest looking of the alchemical patterns he had drawn out, closing his eyes. His muzzle contorted with effort, and suddenly the bars of the cell began darkening, their near-perfect transparency giving way to dull opaqueness. The bars glowed briefly with their own internal light, but as that light faded the bars did not become transparent again; they were silvery-black and dull. Judy pushed against one and the outer surface crumbled in her paw, falling apart into a dark powder. Judy turned to Nick to congratulate him, but he had turned his attention to a significantly more complicated circle he had drawn, which seemed to cost him even more effort. He trembled as the floor of the cell writhed and changed colors, forming a portion into a smooth cylinder much longer than it was wide with a wickedly sharp-looking tip on one end. "For you," he managed, and Judy hefted the spear he had made.

It wasn't quite as perfectly balanced as her own spear, but it felt like it was made of the same strong and lightweight metal. "Are you alright?" she asked.

It took Nick a moment to respond; he almost looked as though he might vomit. The color had gone out of the insides of his ears, which had pressed themselves flat against his head, and he was still trembling and panting. "Fine," he said at last, "Just... Hard with a circle like this and no focus."

Although Nick had obviously taken quite a bit of care in drawing out his work, he hadn't had much to work with. He had apparently used a bit of thread unraveled from his robe to aid in drawing straight lines and circles, but they weren't quite as perfect as the ones she had seen him make with his tools. "Come on," Judy said, and offered him a paw; it took him a moment and then he was standing next to her.

Judy knocked against the bars with her spear, quickly making a hole large enough for both of them to walk through, and then they were next to the door. Judy was reaching for the doorknob when Nick spoke. "Wait!" he said, and he still looked completely drained from the alchemy he had done.

"What is it?" Judy asked, turning the spear over and over in her paws; she didn't want to hurt anyone, particularly not a member of the City Guard, but she was ready for action and could feel the tension of it in her.

"What if this is a trap?" Nick asked, "You know, let us escape so they can kill us escaping?"

Judy paused, trying to think up some reasonable counter that she could give. "Then they could have just killed us and made it look like a failed escape attempt," she said at last.

"You did say he didn't trust all of the guards," Nick pointed out, "But they'll pretty much all think we're guilty if they catch us escaping, right?"

"That's..." Judy began, and then stopped.

"That's a chance we have to take," she said.

Their plan, such as it was, was extremely simple. They would get out of the barracks and out of Phoenix as quickly as possible, and then head for the Middle Baronies, again as quickly as possible. It wouldn't be a pleasant trip without any supplies, and probably even more unpleasant for Nick since he'd have to make up the difference with transmutations, but unburdened they could probably make great time. Whether they would be fast enough to outrun Cencerro and whatever he had planned was an entirely different question, but they had to at least make the attempt. And so Judy, her heart pounding in her ears, reached out and slowly pulled the door open.

Nothing happened.

No guard leaped out at her or called out an alarm; it was almost anti-climactic to see nothing more than the simple staircase that stretched upwards to the main level. Judy strained her hearing as much as she could, but still heard nothing. She motioned for Nick to follow her, and he did, moving with exaggerated slowness. They crept up the stairs until they were in the basement, but the normal cells were dark and empty and there were no guards present. The next segment, though, was the most dangerous, and the seconds seemed to stretch out as they slowly made their way up the last few stairs. First there were ten steps left, and then eight, and then three, and then suddenly they were standing at the door that led into the main barracks level. "I don't hear anything," Judy said, the words so low she was practically just mouthing them, and Nick actually did mouth his response.

"Me neither."

"Ready?" Judy mouthed, and Nick nodded.

She tried not to think of the danger. She was small and fast, a difficult target to hit and trained in how members of the City Guard thought. Nick was taller, a civilian, and Judy could tell that he was still exhausted from the alchemy he had done in the cell. She hadn't told Nick, not wanting to speak the words out loud, but she had decided that she would do whatever it took to make sure Nick escaped the barracks, even if it cost her her own life. "Three..." Judy mouthed, her paw on the doorknob.

"Two..."

"One..."

She threw open the door and ran, making sure Nick was at her side. She barely paid any attention to what they were running past, more concerned with making sure that she didn't leave Nick behind, but there was no one present. The walls and cold furnishings slipped past, the exit in sight, and Judy put on a burst of speed as she pulled Nick along. Amazingly, impossibly, no one had spotted them; they were going to make it.

They burst into the light of a new day, Judy's heart beating with sudden and fierce joy, but as they ran past the barracks Judy noticed something. Or rather, she noticed what she _wasn't_ noticing.

The tavern next to the barracks, which had been doing such a bustling business the first time Judy had gone past, was still, all of the tables and chairs out on balconies empty. The streets were totally deserted, feeling uncomfortably wide with not so much as a single pedestrian or merchant fighting for space. There was none of the vibrant pulse that Phoenix had always seemed to have; there was no murmur of distant conversations or creaking of wagons or any of the hundred other sounds that gave a place life.

A bird cried out in the distance, and it almost sounded like a mammal screaming, echoing between buildings in a way that normal life in Phoenix would make impossible. Judy had come to a stop before she had realized it, looking around in stunned silence as Nick did the same. A scrap of paper caught on a low and mournful wind blew past, and the rugs on display at a nearby rug-maker's flapped limply and impossibly loud in the quiet.

Judy turned to Nick, noticing how wide his eyes were, and couldn't help but break the silence. "Where _is_ everyone?"


	26. Chapter 26

Waking up with his wife's arm around him was one of those simple pleasures Bogo hadn't even realized he missed until he had it again. He had fallen asleep nearly the instant his head touched the cot, but when he awoke he felt refreshed in a way he never had before on the occasions he had previously used the cot. It was even more cramped than it usually was, with Maria's warm presence at his side, but whereas the cot had always been supremely uncomfortable before he found it as soothing and as difficult to get out of as his bed back home. "Back to work?" she murmured, her lips and breath tickling his ear.

Bogo sighed as Maria slowly ran her arm down from his shoulder to his waist, relishing the sensation of her fingers against him. She must have stayed awake the entire time he slept; she had always been able to show how much she loved him even without a single word. "Back to work," he agreed, slowly rolling himself into a sitting position on the side of the cot.

It wasn't easy, considering how narrow the cot was; they had both been on their sides and wouldn't have fit otherwise. But once he was sitting Maria moved to sit at his side, casually looping her arm around his shoulder. "You're not as young as you used to be," she said, "You can't keep pushing yourself so hard."

It was odd, hearing a thought that had run through his head with increasing frequency coming out of his wife's mouth, but Bogo simply grunted. "The faster I get through this the sooner my retirement goes through," he said, and Maria smiled at him.

He had mentioned his upcoming forced retirement from the position of Captain General, but her response was still teasing. "What'll I do, what with you brooding around the house all day?" she asked, and her smile widened, "Perhaps you could become my assistant. See if calves are any easier to deal with than the Queen's Council."

Bogo felt a thin smile coming across his own face. "The calves _are_ probably better behaved," he said, and Maria gave him a playful shove.

"You already made that joke," she said.

"Who said it was a joke?"

She didn't have an immediate response for that, her fingers drifting down his back to start making slow circles. "You've been expecting something like this, even if you didn't know it," she said at last, "Ever since you arrested Tlatoani, you've been on edge."

"Have I?" Bogo asked, but the withering look Maria gave him rivaled the glare he favored incompetent guards with.

He had, of course, not mentioned any of the details of Alfonso's arrest or the lead up to it, taking his responsibility to maintain the City Guard's information and secrecy quite seriously, but Maria was far from foolish and always read the entire newspaper. She knew the details as well as any civilian, perhaps better because of her proximity to him and her ability to read his moods. He had warned the Queen's Council about what the power vacuum left by the shrew's arrest might cause and been almost completely ignored. Until the attempts on the princess's life had started, at least. "You have," Maria said firmly, "I can tell you're worried. Your thoughts are going in circles, aren't they?"

Bogo sighed; sometimes she knew him perhaps too well. "Yes," he admitted, and Maria leaned up against him.

Her plain dress was somewhat rumpled from lying on the cot, and her fur had pressed itself into whorls and clumps that stuck out at odd angles and emphasized the threads of white age had brought. Despite it all, though, he didn't think she had ever been any lovelier than she was in that moment. "When you retire," she began slowly, and her hoof drifted further down his back, "I can think of something else you could do instead of brooding."

Her fingers brushed past the base of his tail, going a little further to the side and down before she squeezed. "What do you think of that?" she whispered, his ear very nearly in her mouth she was so close.

"I think I'll enjoy my retirement," Bogo said, and he gave her a quick kiss as he gently pulled her hoof away from his butt and stood, "But I've got work to do first."

Maria smiled up at him. "You better come home soon, dear," she said as she stood up herself and pulled at her dress to straighten it.

"I will," Bogo said, and he meant the words with all his heart.

Maria stole another kiss on her way out, and Bogo watched her go for a long moment before turning to the washbasin and mirror in the little room. After he was sure that his appearance met his standards, he left his office without a backwards glance. A different pair of guards—who nearly dropped their spears, they snapped to attention so quickly when he opened the replaced door—were waiting outside, and since there was nothing new for them to report Bogo hurried past.

It was more than a little concerning that no word had yet come back from the mammals Bogo had dispatched to find out what had made Phoenix go dark, and Bogo tried to push down the uneasy feeling in his gut. Instinct, if not yet facts, told him that there was some kind of connection between the attempts on the princess's life and what had happened in Phoenix; surely the blood magician who had made the quauhxicallis the two would-be assassins had used somehow tied both events together even if he didn't know how. Still, once he had been admitted to the royal suites for an audience with the queen and the princess alone, he felt as though he was the perfect picture of a Captain General. _Never let them see you bleed_ , his predecessor had told him once, and it was a lesson he had taken to heart.

"Your majesties," Bogo said respectfully, and the queen airily waved the words and formality away.

"Did you enjoy your nap?" she asked, and Bogo couldn't help but look up in surprise.

"I—" he began, but the queen cut him off, a small smile playing across her face.

"Who do you suppose insisted your wife be allowed in?" the queen asked, "I know how much she means to you—and you to her."

The queen's smile somehow became sad without changing so much as a degree. It was one of those strange ironies of life; the queen had more wealth and power than he could ever dream of holding, but he had something she had lost forever. The prince consort and the princess were Queen Lana's greatest treasures; one of them was already gone and the other was being actively threatened.

"Mrs. Bogo was here?" Princess Isabel asked eagerly, apparently blind to her mother's reaction, "How is she?"

"Well, your majesty," Bogo answered respectfully, and he was grateful for the smooth diversion the princess allowed him.

Although the princess naturally had a whole array of tutors who came from the proper rank of society to educate her, none of them had succeeded at teaching her the basics of math. Maria had, and if it hadn't been for the queen's desire to keep the families of those tutors from complaining she might have made the post permanent. The princess had become rather fond of Maria as a tutor, though, and Bogo wondered if his new rank of nobility would give the two the opportunity to be student and teacher again. It was a nice thought, but he pushed it aside; any dreams of what the future might bring could wait for after the latest crisis was resolved. "I have a proposal," Bogo began slowly, "But I must be sure of something first."

He probably looked mad, carefully going through the royal suites and checking for any eavesdroppers, but his plan was too vulnerable to falling apart if information leaked to be anything less than as thorough as possible. It took nearly half an hour; the queen silently watching the whole time. The princess had started to ask a question before the queen touched her arm and she fell silent, but at last Bogo was satisfied that no one would be able to overhear them. "I think I have a means of finding out who is behind the attempts on the princess's life," Bogo said, and explained his suspicion that one or more of the queen's top advisers was behind the attacks.

Both queen and princess listened attentively, but when he was done the queen seemed simply to be considering his words while the princess looked shocked. "You can't think that one of them is guilty of treason, can you? Of trying to _kill_ me?" she asked, and her voice trembled with emotion, "Lady Cencerro is like an aunt to me! And I know you don't like Lord Corazón, but he cares _so_ much about all the citizens of Zootopia. And Lord Cerdo—"

"I've long suspected that someone murdered your father, my dear," the queen interrupted, and her voice was oddly flat.

The queen's face looked as though it could have been carved from stone, her eyes hard. Princess Isabel's mouth opened, and then closed, and then opened again, completely wordlessly. "Papa was murdered?" she choked out, and then she burst into tears.

The queen placed an arm around her daughter, rocking her gently, the stony look gradually leaving her face as she comforted the princess. When at last Isabel was no longer heaving with sobs, she wiped at her puffy red eyes with one paw. In her grief, the princess's chimeric nature was somehow less unusual; the expression of misery Bogo saw was one he had seen echoed across countless faces while on the job. "I have been a fool," Isabel said, her eyes still watery, and the queen shook her head, drawing her closer.

"You have been a lamb," the queen said gently, "And it is not weakness or foolishness to see the best in mammals. Punishing an innocent mammal is a terrible crime, my dear."

Bogo couldn't help but remember that the queen had expected him to torture information out of Alfonso, but he supposed it was the mark of a good parent to try to raise their child to be better than they themselves were. The gods certainly knew that he and Maria had tried, but—Bogo dismissed the memory of his daughter with no small amount of effort. His nap—and seeing his wife—had helped somewhat, but his mind still seemed prone to drift off on random tangents. "A great queen is just," Queen Lana said, but she wasn't looking at Maria as she spoke.

The queen was looking Bogo dead in the eyes even as she stroked the odd woolly fur atop her daughter's head. "Cruelty and harshness cannot keep control for long, my dear. It would dishonor your father's memory to act otherwise," she said.

The princess nodded slowly. "We cannot act without absolute proof," she said, and Bogo felt his blood run cold.

Certainly he was used to seeing a shadow of the prince consort in the princess's blended features; she was as much a jaguar like her father as she was a sheep like her mother. But as a chimera she was so uniquely herself, completely unlike any other mammal, that it was easy to forget until some small gesture brought one of her parents to mind. The way her tail, shorter though it was, twitched as her father's had. The way she surreptitiously stretched the way her mother did when she got tired of sitting. It had always been little things before, but when the princess spoke it had been as though it _was_ her father had spoken, the words and intonation a perfect match.

From the way that Queen Lana twitched Bogo was sure that she had experienced a similar reaction. "What do you propose, Lord Bogo?" she asked.

"Whoever is behind the attacks on the princess has made two attempts that we know of, and I suspect has gone to extreme lengths to hide their actions."

"Phoenix, you mean," the princess interrupted, and although her eyes were still puffy from crying they were still sharp and alert as she watched him closely.

Bogo nodded. "I strongly suspect the mastermind has taken action against Phoenix to destroy some kind of evidence linking them to their crime," he said, and the queen nodded thoughtfully.

"And what does that tell you, my dear?" she asked, turning to face her daughter.

Bogo was quite used to the queen taking various, and often unusual, opportunities to teach her daughter some lesson or another, and he thought he understood the logic behind it. It was, after all, the same reason the queen had started bringing her daughter to meetings of the Queen's Council; if Princess Isabel was to someday lead Zootopia she had to understand _why_ things happened.

The princess frowned, stroking at her jaw. Her tongue poked between her strange mixture of teeth that could tear flesh as easily as they could grind plants as she thought about it. "If there's something to hide," she began slowly, "And they're willing and able to... to destroy a town to do it..."

She glanced anxiously at her mother, as if to see if her analysis was right, and the queen gave her a slow nod. "Then that means that they have power. A lot of it. The sort a member of your council has."

"Indeed," the queen said, although her tone was not quite approving, "I think I know what you're about to suggest, Bogo."

The princess looked between her mother and Bogo; Bogo did not react and neither did the queen. "What?" she asked at last, "What are you suggesting?"

"There have been two attempts on your life so far, your majesty," Bogo replied, "I suspect there will be a third."

It took a moment for the princess to understand the implication, but to her credit at last she did. "You mean to bait them into acting," she said, her eyes wide.

"Yes," Bogo replied, "Feed all three of them different opportunities, and see which one is taken."

"A trap," the queen said, nodding.

"Then of course we must try it!" the princess began eagerly, "We must—"

"A trap with you as the bait," the queen interrupted bluntly, "You would be putting your life in Lord Bogo's hooves."

"I trust him," Princess Isabel said promptly, and Bogo couldn't help but feel a swell of pride at how rapidly the princess had said it, and how obviously she believed it.

"Thank you, Lord Bogo," the queen said, "We will consider it."

"But—" the princess began, and the queen cut her off almost instantly.

"There will only be one chance to try this plan, and three opportunities for you to lose your life," she said sharply, "It may be that all of them are innocent. Or it might be all of them working together. The fish that is reeled in is caught, yes, but the worm on the hook dies with it. And my council is far cleverer than a fish! If this plan fails, they will see through any other such attempt and will know where our suspicions lie."

"They must already know that they're suspected," the princess said, her chin at an obstinate angle, "And—"

"And neither I nor Zootopia could bear your loss," the queen interrupted, her voice low.

"Then we will consider it seriously," the princess said sharply, looking at her mother.

"We shall. You are dismissed, Lord Bogo," the queen said, and Bogo nodded.

In short order, he had left the royal apartments behind, making his way back to his office. The meeting had gone about as well as he had hoped; he suspected that ultimately the queen would leave the decision up to the princess, and he knew the princess would want to go ahead with it. That was, after all, the burden of being a parent. Eventually, your children would make decisions for themselves, and all you could do was hope that they could live with the consequences.

Although he didn't have authorization—not yet, at least—he spent his time considering how best to design the trap. He had held a vague outline in his head, but it would not be enough; he needed something absolute and definitive. It had to be a trap with three triggers, designed so that it was not obvious to the mammals he sought to bait even if they shared information with each other. About two hours later, once he thought he had something that could stand up to all the problems he could foresee, there came a sudden and urgent knocking on his office door. "Captain General!" a breathless voice called through, "There's been news from Phoenix!"

Bogo stood up from his desk so quickly that he knocked half of what had been on it off. He ignored the fallen papers, pens, and books littering his floor and immediately made his way to the door. When he opened it, a slim cheetah in the uniform of a lieutenant saluted him as sharply as he could while his chest heaved like bellows. "Urgent message, sir," the cheetah said, giving him a sealed envelope.

"Excellent work, Lieutenant," Bogo said, even as he broke the seal with one finger and ripped the envelope open.

"Will you have a response, sir?" the cheetah asked, but Bogo barely heard him.

The words on the letter were hastily written, the letters so uneven and blotchy they were difficult to read. Once he had, though, Bogo had to read the message again to be sure he had read it right.

 _Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro reports Phoenix invaded by massive barbarian force from beyond the Wall. Civilian losses catastrophic. Bridge to Phoenix destroyed to prevent further progress. Cannot hold. Cencerro en route with survivors._

Bogo slumped against the wall outside his office; he didn't seem to be able to get enough air into his lungs and the corridor seemed to spin around him. It should have been impossible, but the words remained obdurately on the page, harshly black against white. The last time Zootopia had been invaded by mammals from beyond the Wall, the ruling dynasty had been overthrown and the city entirely remade in the image of the victors. But the Oveja dynasty, which the queen and the princess were the most recent members of, had brought peace and prosperity, putting an end to the brutal and violent rule of the emperors. Somehow, Bogo doubted that the latest invaders would be anywhere near as benevolent. The torcs might slow the barbarians down, but he thought the attempts on the princess's life were proof that someone was betraying the city. It seemed impossible that the invasion wasn't linked to the assassination attempts, and Bogo looked down at the letter again.

He had all but crushed it between his hooves, but he could still read it. Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro being en route with survivors meant something. It meant that his trap didn't need _three_ triggers. It needed four.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

There really wasn't too much for me to say in terms of author's notes last chapter, and I liked the more dramatic break, so I'm including them here.

Nick transmuted the cell bars from diamond into graphite. Both are arrangements of carbon atoms, but graphite is significantly weaker, allowing it to be easily broken. In his bout with Judy, he was able to use the wind and earth as focuses, but lacks them either in the cell, explaining his difficulty performing the transmutations. Drawing out the patterns with his own blood seemed a simple enough way to do it, lacking other options.

In this chapter, we learn that Bogo is the little spoon when he and his wife share a bed. Not exactly an Earth-shattering detail, but the bigger person doesn't always have to be the big spoon!

Bogo did indeed warn the Queen's Council that Alfonso's arrest left a power vacuum all the way back in chapter 2, and he did make a joke about nobles being more unruly than children in chapter 24.

Bogo's own daughter has been mentioned only briefly, such as in chapter 10, but it is something he has in common with both the queen and Alfonso. In chapter 14, the queen's expectation that Bogo would use torture was indicated; I figured that this wasn't something that Bogo would let go. The prince consort did use the words "absolute proof" in chapter 6 when Bogo is remembering his terrible death.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought.


	27. Chapter 27

"Are you expecting to find a book labeled 'Secret Evil Plan, Do Not Read'?" Nick asked.

They were searching Cencerro's office; after the eerie stillness of the streets of Phoenix Nick hadn't taken much convincing to go back into the barracks. His tone as he asked the question sounded, to Judy's ears, as though he was trying to be casual and not quite succeeding. There was a tense undercurrent in his voice; he sounded on the edge between worry and panic.

Although Judy herself wasn't afraid, she couldn't help but wonder if his reaction was the right one; the situation they had found themselves in was far more bizarre than anything she could have imagined. "The more information we can take to the captain general, the better," Judy replied as she went through the drawers of Cencerro's desk.

Everything was as perfectly organized as his office suggested that it would be; the drawer Judy was pawing through had nearly a decade's worth of operating budgets filled with dense and neatly written columns of numbers and descriptions. "If he won't take a bunny guard and a fox alchemist at their word, you mean," Nick replied.

He was looking through the more recent files that had been stacked with an almost geometric precision atop Cencerro's desk, but from his expression Judy could tell he hadn't found anything of interest as she looked up sharply from her own work. "Why wouldn't Bogo believe us?" she asked, and the smile Nick gave her was somehow sad.

"Oh, Carrots," he said, about turning the words into a sigh, "You really are too pure for this world, aren't you?"

His tone wasn't nearly as mocking as his words seemed like they should be; when he continued he sounded positively melancholy. "If it comes down to the word of a rookie—a _bunny_ rookie—against the head of the Phoenix City Guard, do you really think he'd accept our side? We'd just end up in cells that'd be a tiny bit more difficult to get out of."

Judy wanted to be able to voice a protest but couldn't. She had seen Bogo speak once before, but had never had a conversation with him. Still, the buffalo had seemed to all but radiate competence and authority. If anyone could see through whatever web of lies Cencerro would spin, she had to believe it would be the captain general. And then, before her ears had the chance to so much as droop an inch, they suddenly shot up again as something occurred to her: she might not know what Cencerro's plan was, but she did know at least one of his lies. "If Cencerro is going to tell him that I'm dead, us showing up would be proof that he's lying," Judy said, "Bogo would have to believe us then."

Nick scratched at the side of his muzzle idly. "Unless he was lying about planning on telling that lie," Nick said, "Criminals can lie, you know."

Judy couldn't help but laugh, and Nick cocked his head to the side in apparent puzzlement. "I'm sorry," Judy said, trying to get herself under control, "It's just that— It's just—"

It took her a moment before she could get the words out. "Cencerro said the same thing about _you_ , right here in this office."

Nick suddenly grinned, and it lit up his whole face. His ears, which had been at least partially pressed back the entire time since they had burst out onto the empty streets of Phoenix, stood up again, and his tail made a single sweep. "He said that about _me_?" Nick asked, and pressed a paw to his chest, his fingers elegantly tented to make it a positively foppish gesture, "I'm going to enjoy holding that over his head. Assuming we get out of this mess."

His expression darkened again, and Judy reached up to give his paw a quick squeeze. "We will," she said firmly.

"Who am I to argue with you?" Nick asked, and there was a smile in his voice as he went back to looking through the files on top of Cencerro's desk.

Judy had a small smile of her own as she returned to the thick ledgers she was looking through, which was good since they were about the most tedious documents she had ever seen. Her parents had insisted on showing all of their kits how the Totchli Barony kept track of its expenses and profits so she was at least somewhat familiar with accounting practices, but she had never been particularly interested in it. If Cencerro had been cooking the books as part of whatever he had been planning, she wasn't sure that she would have been able to spot it unless he had been exceptionally sloppy.

That, unfortunately, did not seem to be the case; every thick ledger was full of almost impossibly precise entries. Still, it was also possible that Cencerro had hidden something in one of the books, and Judy kept up her methodical search. The next ten minutes passed in silence, and Judy was just beginning to think that her idea was only wasting precious time that they could have used for travel when she opened the ledger that had been at the very back of the drawer. Although it had the same bland black cover as all the others, it didn't have a year written on the front. A spark of excitement shot up her spine as she flipped it open and saw that a number of pages had been precisely cut out of the front. The page that had become the first one had a neat grid of letters on it, but unlike the other ledgers it didn't look like a balance sheet. Judy blinked to clear her eyes, not sure at first if she wasn't looking at it right, but the contents of the ledger didn't look like anything. The letters filling the grid formed complete gibberish whether she tried reading it forwards or backwards, up or down, or even diagonally. Judy flipped through the remaining pages and saw that while every page looked to be _unique_ nonsense, the way they were laid out was the same.

Each page only had text on one side, and the grids of seemingly random letters each had the same number of columns and rows. At the top of each page, above the grid, was a single number that Judy supposed were page numbers. She suddenly realized what the book was and called out. "Nick, look at this!"

Judy heaved the book from where she had been paging through it on the floor to the top of Cencerro's desk. Nick raised an eyebrow at the force with which she set the book down, but looked over the first page. "It's in code," he said, after a moment's examination, "Which, unless you happen to have a cipher—"

"No, no, don't you see?" Judy interrupted, gesturing forcefully at the book, "All the pages are like this. It's not _in_ code, it _is_ the code!"

The angle Nick's head was cocked at started to become more extreme, and Judy hastily launched into an explanation. "We learned about this in the academy. Two mammals each have identical books of random letters. You add the letters of the message you want to send to the first page of the book that hasn't been used yet. Then the mammal getting the message subtracts the letters in their book from the letters in the message. See, the pages are numbered so they can say which page to use, and they destroy the pages that have been used. That's why this book is missing a bunch of pages from the beginning."

Judy smiled at Nick triumphantly as she caught her breath; she had barely paused between sentences and found herself needing to take in a large lungful of air. To Nick's credit, he seemed to instantly grasp the point she was making. "Very clever. So maybe we can't find the messages Cencerro was sending or receiving," Nick began slowly, "But someone else is going to have a book identical to this one."

"Exactly!" Judy said, "And _that_ means we'll know who he was conspiring with!"

They both looked at each other for a long moment. "Unless they were more careful than Cencerro and destroyed their book," Nick said, but he carefully closed the book and set it aside.

"It's worth looking into," Judy said, "For all we know, Bogo already has a bunch of suspects under arrest who haven't had the chance to destroy the evidence yet."

"It's possible," Nick agreed, "But I'm not sure we'll find anything else here."

It didn't take very much searching before Judy agreed that Nick was right. After they had both thoroughly searched Cencerro's office without finding anything else worth paying attention to, though, Judy had them make one more stop in the barracks. As she had hoped, everything that they had been carrying had been neatly locked up exactly where she thought it would be. Considering the circumstances he had made it under, the spear Nick had made her in the cell was a decent weapon, but she much preferred to have her spear back and the sword Nick had made her at her waist. If Nick understood the significance of her wearing it with the rest of the uniform she carefully reassembled he didn't comment on it.

Still, he was busy changing out of his rather tattered robes into an outfit he pulled from his bag that looked much the same as the one he had traveled in. It meant he had left her alone in the evidence room while he changed in the corridor outside, and it also meant that he hadn't seen her reaction to coming across the little golden carrot again. Judy had squeezed it in her paw, savoring the heavy solidity of the ornament, before sliding it into her pocket. It seemed as though it had been ages ago that he had given it to her, and everything had changed since then. They might be the only two mammals able to stop whatever Cencerro was planning, and Judy vowed that no matter what else happened she would make sure that Nick was safe.

"Ready to go?" Nick asked, leaning around the doorway to the evidence room with a remarkable casualness.

The evidence room itself was identical to how other barracks were set up; it wasn't much more than a series of variously-sized drawers set into the walls, with the harsh glare of an un-shielded alchemical torch embedded in the ceiling providing light. Even under such unflattering light, which completely banished shadows and made most mammals seem sickly and washed-out, Nick looked...

Judy wasn't sure she could put a finger on it; without the ornamented robes he had been wearing he certainly didn't look like the textbook-standard image of an alchemist, and even if he had been wearing his un-ornamented torc (which he wasn't) it wouldn't have quite made him look like a merchant. He looked like himself, which was a rather weak description but was about the best that Judy could come up with. His red-orange fur positively glowed, and while Judy thought she saw a shadow of worry on his face he had his usual smirk affixed.

"Ready," Judy answered, and they set off for the bridge that led out of Phoenix.

Although Judy would have liked to simply head out of town as quickly as possible, Nick forced her to walk slowly. There was still no sign of anyone on the street outside the barracks, but as they passed the tavern next door Nick pointed out something she hadn't noticed before. The tavern had a number of balconies and patios with tables and chairs on them, and at a number of tables there were plates of half-eaten food. No flies had started to swarm the remains, but the vegetables were starting to look brown and wilted and a half-eaten piece of fish looked somewhat fuzzy. "It's like everyone just got up and left," Nick observed quietly, and Judy nodded.

"Could an alchemist have, you know..." Judy trailed off, vaguely making the shape of an explosion with her paws.

"Transmuted everyone into gas or something?" Nick asked, his voice no louder than before.

Judy nodded again, and Nick shrugged. "I don't think so. It'd be like a mouse trying to carry an elephant, trying to control an alchemical reaction the size of Phoenix," he said, but his words weren't nearly as dismissive as she had hoped they would be.

His tone had been thoughtful, and Judy got the sense it was a question he had asked himself. "I know _I_ couldn't do it, but maybe they teach master alchemists something besides the secret of making a philosopher's stone," Nick said, and he smiled thinly, "Alchemists do love their secrets."

"So I've seen," Judy said, and Nick's smile widened slightly.

"My mystery is all a part of my charm," he said lightly, "Mammals don't like it if they get the sense that alchemists aren't wise and powerful beyond mortal reckoning. Bad for business, you see."

He was still slowly scanning the street, his ears swiveling in all directions as he seemed to be anticipating an ambush, but Judy appreciated the fact that even under the circumstances he was able to make his little jokes. Perhaps it was just his way of dealing with his fear, but it was better than raw panic. "What about that book?" Judy asked, as they turned a corner onto a street that looked little different than the one they had just left, "Was there something in that Golden Codex that could have done this?"

As before, there were no mammals present, but there were the signs of them. An abandoned cart piled high with stacks of newspapers tied together with twine, some of which flapped weakly in the wind where the knots had been poorly done, rested on one side of the street. The door to a bakery rattled on its hinges in the same wind, and when the door gusted open Judy saw a neatly wrapped loaf of bread on the counter with a short stack of coins to its side. It really did look as though everyone in Phoenix had simply disintegrated no matter what Nick said. He had previously as much as admitted that the masters of the Alchemist Guild knew things he did not, though, and Judy wondered if it had been a coincidence that Cencerro had arrested Nick during the attempt to buy the Golden Codex.

"Excellent question, Carrots, but as far as _I_ know, no one knows," Nick said.

Before Judy could ask the obvious question as to how he knew that, Nick continued. "It is a book of alchemy, but it was written hundreds of years ago. Maybe in code, maybe in a lost language, but as far as I know no one alive can read any of the codices."

Judy frowned. "How do you know it's a book of alchemy if no one can read it?" she asked.

"All of the old codices have an ouroboros on their covers and the pages are full of complicated diagrams. But they don't look like modern alchemy tables and no one can read the text so it's anyone's guess what they're trying to say. Maybe they're actually cookbooks," Nick said with a shrug.

"And you thought you could crack the mystery?" Judy asked, and Nick shrugged again.

"What can I say?" he said, "I am an extremely clever fox—if you'll forgive the modesty."

Judy laughed, and Nick clutched at his chest as though she had wounded him. "Most of those old codices just make a treasure hunter a few coins and then go right into the collection of some minor noble who thinks having books he can't read makes him look respectable," Nick said, "But I thought I'd see if I could make anything out of it."

Judy had, in fact, heard of other minor nobles in the Middle Baronies engaging in what her father dismissively called "putting on airs" by assembling collections of artifacts from earlier eras of Zootopia's history. So far as Judy knew, most of those nobles knew very little about their collections; her uncle had once told her the amusing if somewhat implausible story of a near-sighted goat lord who had been tricked into buying what he had been assured was an antique vase but was actually a relatively new chamber pot. The mammal who had swindled that goat had been, or so the story went, a fox, and Judy looked at Nick. "Did you know any of those nobles?" she asked.

She didn't want to think of Nick as a swindler, especially in light of her lapse in judgement when he had been innocently helping that shrew and her bird, but she had the awful feeling that if she ever took Nick home to the Totchli Barony that it was the sort of thing her family might assume about him. Not that there was a reason to bring him to Totchli Barony, of course, although it would be nice to get to show him around and maybe—"There aren't too many nobles who want to do business with a fox," Nick said, interrupting her thoughts.

"I'm a noble," Judy blurted, the words out of her mouth before she could think about them.

"A really minor one, and I'm not going to inherit the barony but—" she continued, unable to stop the flow of words until Nick interrupted.

"You should have mentioned it earlier, Lady Carrots," he said, putting a posh accent on the words, "I'll keep that in mind."

"Please don't call me that," Judy said, and Nick's only response was that his smile widened a degree.

They had passed through more of Phoenix's eerily quiet streets, but before turning the corner Nick suddenly threw out a paw and stopped her. "The bridge is around this corner," he said in a low whisper.

Judy nodded, straining her ears. The wind was blowing the wrong way, from beyond the wall and towards the center of Zootopia, but when the gust stopped Judy froze. "Do you hear that?" she asked, and when Nick shook his head Judy carefully got on all fours.

She cautiously peeked around the corner and almost instantly pulled her head back. "The bridge is gone," she hissed, and Nick's eyes widened in surprise.

"Gone?" he asked, "What do you mean, gone?"

The massive bridge that connected Phoenix to the rest of the Outer Baronies wasn't as elaborate as the Cozamalotl Bridge, but it had seemed especially solid. Where before there had been a sturdy bridge of white stone, it looked as though a giant playing with enormous blocks had destroyed their creation. There was now a massive chasm between either side of the bridge, the borders on either end irregular where blocks must have fallen into the gorge after the bridge was split. "Someone destroyed it," Judy said, which seemed to be the simplest way of getting the point across, "There's an army on the other side."

"An army?" Nick asked, his voice almost too loud, and they both looked around for a second after he spoke to see if there was any indication that he had been heard.

It had been what Judy had heard; the flapping of banners and the creak of armor, and when Nick risked a quick look of his own Judy saw from his expression that she hadn't been imagining it. "That's an army," Nick said, pointing at the corner of the building they were hiding behind.

The disbelief was evident in his voice; Judy hadn't recognized the banners being flown by the mammals, and they were too far away to get a sense of the uniforms that the mammals were wearing. But there had to be thousands of them, mammals of all different sizes standing watch as though they were waiting for an opposing army to come meet them. If Judy was remembering the military history that had been drilled into her at the academy correctly—and she saw no reason to think she wasn't—it had been centuries since an opposing army had marched into Zootopia. "Do you think they're from beyond the Wall?" Judy asked, and Nick's shrug was helplessly expressive.

"I know that banner," Nick replied.

The banners the mammals had been carrying were black with a curious yellow sigil on them; it might have been a crude representation of a lightning bolt, but Judy didn't know it. She knew she had the sigils of all the existing noble houses memorized, and she stared at Nick. "That was Oztoyehuatl's sigil," he said, and the wonder in his voice was obvious.

"Do you know what that means?" Judy asked.

"No. Do you?"

"No."

They both fell silent, Judy turning the idea over and over in her mind. Was it possible that Oztoyehuatl had somehow survived the punishment for his treason all those centuries ago? He couldn't possibly still be alive, of course, but what if he had fled beyond the wall, his descendants amassing an army in preparation for revenge? Or perhaps it was someone simply using Oztoyehuatl's banner for the symbolism; the fox had tried to overthrow the royal family.

"There's no way we're getting past an army," Nick said, "I could fix the bridge well enough for us to cross, but there's no point if there's an army waiting for us."

Judy chewed at her lip. There had to be another way to get out of Phoenix; it had become more important than ever to get a warning to the captain general. "What if we cross at a different point?" Judy asked, but Nick shook his head.

"We'd be seen no matter where we do it," he said.

She thought he was right; the way that Phoenix was nestled in the roughly triangular section formed by the Y-shaped fissure that surrounded it, it was easy for mammals standing at the fork of the fissure to see all of it. Judy couldn't see how far around the fissure the army ranged, but they'd be horribly vulnerable while Nick made a bridge with alchemy and they crossed.

Nick suddenly sighed, and Judy looked up at him. "I know how we can cross," Nick said, but he didn't look particularly happy about it, "I hate the idea, but—"

"But what?" Judy interrupted, "How can we get across without being seen?"

"We're going to go down. We'll go through what's left of Quimichpatlan Barony."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Cencerro did tell Judy, in chapter 23, that he planned on telling her parents that she died a hero, and here Judy makes the assumption that he would first tell this lie to Bogo. In chapter 15, Cencerro did warn Judy that criminals can lie and was speaking about Nick.

In this chapter, Judy theorizes that the book she found in Cencerro's desk is a one-time pad, to use the proper cryptology term, and the explanation in the chapter matches up the use of real one-time pads. The idea is simple: two or more parties who wish to send secret messages to each other both have identical pads containing identical sequences of randomly generated numbers. To send a message, you can add the letters of your message to the corresponding letters of the one-time pad (for example, if the first letter of your message is A and the first letter of the one-time pad is C, you would add A+C (1+3) and have D (4) as the letter in the coded message. The recipient then subtracts the one-time pad from the encoded text to get the message.

The advantage of one-time pads is that, if proper security measures are taken to ensure that pages of the one-time pad are not reused, that no one else besides the intended senders and recipients has a copy of the one-time pad, and that the sequence of random letters is truly random, they are impossible to crack. Of course, that's a significant number of caveats that I've listed, but if you can meet the requirements then the message is truly secure. One-time pads were first invented in 1882, but it's one of those methods that could theoretically have been invented at any time. Considering that this is a fairly out-there AU, I didn't think it out of place.

The special significance of Judy wearing the sabre Nick made her is a reference back to chapter 13, when Judy notes that only members of the City Guard at the rank of captain or higher have the privilege of carrying swords as part of their uniform.

When Quimichpatlan Barony was first mentioned, a number of readers mentioned that they wanted to see for themselves what it was like down there, what with the ruins and the horrible monsters. Well, I won't spoil what's _actually_ down there, but you will indeed get your wish!

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to comment, I'd love to know what you think.


	28. Chapter 28

Bogo had only paused long enough to tell the messenger—in a much brusquer tone than he would have used under any other circumstances—to wait outside his office for a response before setting off for the royal suites as quickly as he could go. Before he had the chance to get so much as twenty feet down the corridor, however, he was accosted by a familiar shrill and squeaky voice. "Captain General!" came the voice of the court alchemist Tomas from somewhere around knee-height.

Bogo looked down and saw the diminutive alchemist standing atop the platform created by his box of supplies, being carried at the moment by an otter in the uniform of a City Guard lieutenant. The otter, to her credit, had started chasing after Bogo as quickly as her stubby little legs and almost waddling gait would let her; she was nearly as ungainly on dry land as she would be acrobatic and agile in water and couldn't keep up. With barely a moment's hesitation Bogo simply snatched up Tomas's box and the mouse, not even breaking his stride. "Captain General!" Tomas squeaked, his voice somehow rising even higher in his outrage, "You may be in a hurry but—"

The fat little mouse had barely managed to hold onto the railing built into the box's lid, and he glared up at Bogo indignantly. "Come collect him at the lift to the queen's rooms," Bogo called over his shoulder at the shocked-looking otter, "He and I need to talk first."

If Tomas had been indignant before, he became all but incandescent with rage at Bogo daring to ignore him; he shook one tiny fist and began saying, "How dare you—"

Bogo cut him off, completely unsympathetic to the alchemist's desire to be treated with the appropriate courtesy; it suddenly occurred to him that as a fellow lord he could be as rude as he wanted. The temptation to say exactly how he felt about the pompous alchemist beckoned to Bogo strongly, but he had never been one to let his personal desires overcome his devotion to his duty. "Time is short," Bogo snapped, "I apologize for not following protocol, but every minute counts now. I need you to tell me everything you know."

He had assumed that the alchemist had been coming to him to report what he knew about the mysterious figure that Wilfrido, the self-declared Duke of Quauhxicallis, claimed to have seen. If Tomas had been planning on pestering Bogo about something completely unrelated, the mouse would find how Bogo set him down even more unceremonious than how he had been picked up. When Tomas simply goggled at him, clinging to the railing of his box for balance as Bogo ran as quickly as he could, Bogo tried appealing to his considerable pride. "What you can tell me might mean the safety of the kingdom," Bogo said, and that at least seemed to unstick Tomas's tongue.

"Well," Tomas began, letting go of the railing for a moment to straighten his richly embroidered robes before quickly grabbing for it again, "Alchemy certainly could be used to hide a mammal's face. You see, in the first stage of transmutation, somewhat crudely referred to as 'blackening' by less scholarly—"

Bogo grunted, and Tomas hastily dropped his lecture. "An alchemist could wear a mask and hold it in the first stage of transmutation, yes," he said, "With a hood up and the mask absorbing all light, it would certainly make them look faceless."

"How good of an alchemist would they have to be?" Bogo asked; he found himself thankful that he had never neglected his exercises even once ascending to his current rank, or his progress through the labyrinth of corridors that made up the palace would have been much slower.

"Oh, reasonably skilled, I should say, to be able to do it for several minutes," Tomas said, "Teaching apprentice alchemists to develop the focus needed for lengthy transmutations is never easy. I assume, of course, that this mysterious mammal had external focuses hidden on his or her body; even a master would have difficulty otherwise."

Bogo nodded as he kept running. Although he knew very little about alchemy, he did know that alchemists used fire, wind, dirt, and water as focuses to somehow assist in their transmutations. How or why it worked was not only beyond him, but not particularly interesting; he simply didn't care how alchemy worked so long as it helped develop the profile of the mammal involved.

"And the voice?" Bogo asked.

To his great surprise, Tomas actually laughed, and managed to sound nearly as condescending as ever as he did. "I doubt that was anything more complex than a puppeteer's trick," Tomas said, "Did you never watch a puppet show when you were young?"

 _There_ was that familiar condescension he had expected from the alchemist. "No," Bogo said; he had never had the time for anything quite so frivolous.

"It's called a swazzle," Tomas said, all but preening smugly with his own cleverness, "Not much more than a reed and a strip of metal. There's some trick to holding it in your mouth and speaking through it, you see, and I'm sure this _weasel_ was so frightened of the little alchemy trick this mammal did that—"

Tomas's face had wrinkled with distaste as he spoke Wilfrido's species, and his voice somehow managed to be haughtier than usual as he spoke of the mammal daring to be terrified by a disturbing stranger without a face. Bogo felt absolutely no compunction about interrupting yet again; he was sure his impatience shone through as he said, "Yes, his mind did the rest. So it was definitely an alchemist?"

"If the story wasn't entirely made up," Tomas sniffed, obviously miffed at having been interrupted.

Bogo doubted that it was. Considering how jealously alchemists guarded the secrets of their abilities, he doubted Wilfrido had the imagination to come up with something an actual alchemist would consider plausible. Besides, his soldiers had in fact found a platinum piece in Wilfrido's shop; if that wasn't proof that the story was the truth, he didn't know what was. There was only one more question he had for Tomas, and it was one he didn't have much hope of getting an answer to. "Have you heard of an alchemist named Nicholas of the Middle Baronies?" Bogo asked, and for the first time since he had picked up Tomas he had to force the words in between gasps for breath; the palace was too large to easily run through.

Tomas considered the question thoughtfully for a moment, and Bogo prodded him on. "A fox?"

"A fox?" Tomas repeated, skepticism tinging his voice, "It's a sorry truth that predators lack the discipline to master alchemy, Captain General."

"He's registered with the kingdom as an alchemist," Bogo managed to force out.

"A charlatan, then," Tomas sniffed, "Doubtlessly he tricked whoever was administering the exam."

"Completed contracts," Bogo said, using as few words as possible as he did his best to keep up his rapid pace.

Tomas's eyes suddenly widened. "You mean the one who calls himself Nick? He's a scavenger, that's all. He might know the basics—the absolute basics, even the slowest-witted apprentice would outshine him—but he certainly isn't a _master_ alchemist. There have been a few complaints about a fox stealing contracts, but nothing that would take any great skill I can assure you."

Bogo simply grunted. Considering that Tomas had rapidly changed his story the instant he had pointed out that the fox had somehow managed to complete contracts, Bogo had the suspicion that this Nicholas was something of an embarrassment to the proud reputation of the Alchemist Guild. He mentally filed that information away; a fox would have been the right height for the mammal Wilfrido had described, and Bogo supposed that if it was down to a fox who was also an alchemist there couldn't be any besides Nicholas. Tomas seemed to pick up on how Bogo had read him, because he hastily added, "He's a trivial annoyance at best, Captain General. Really, hardly even worth mentioning."

Bogo had, at last, reached the lift that would take him the rest of the way to the royal suites; he had no desire to take the stairs after a sprint that might not have quite done his twenty-year-old self proud but was still better than what most mammals his age could manage. "Thank you," he gasped as he forced the box the alchemist stood on into the surprised paws of one of the guards standing on either side of the lift's door, "Lieutenant here soon."

Bogo managed to last until the lift's doors were closed before he leaned over, hooves on his knees, and sucked in air as quickly as he could.

* * *

The ride in the lift was just long enough for Bogo to regain his composure, and when he strode stiffly into the royal suites the queen was mercifully alone. There was no doubt that he would have to tell the other members of the Queen's Council what he had learned, but it was his strong desire to push off that tedious task until after the queen knew. Bogo made his report as efficiently as possible, including what he had just learned from Tomas, and waited as the queen considered the information.

"I am the first to know?" she asked at last.

"Yes, your majesty," Bogo said, "We're the only two in the Inner Baronies who know what the message said."

There was another long silence, the queen getting up from her seat and beginning to pace her study. "What's your opinion of Lieutenant Colonel Diego Cencerro?" she asked suddenly.

"I've met him twice, your majesty, but I did not appoint him to his post."

"Yes, yes, I appointed him as a favor to Lady Cencerro," the queen said, waving her hoof impatiently, "But I asked what your opinion of him was."

Bogo considered the question a moment. "He's been a reliable officer, your majesty. Absolutely by the book, in absolutely everything he does. His reports are concise and clear, and if he had any aspirations of taking my job he had the good grace not to show it."

"You don't like him."

It wasn't a question. "No, your majesty. He's..." Bogo said, but he hesitated, unsure of how to finish the thought.

Despite her earlier and obvious impatience, Queen Lana didn't interject anything, apparently content to let Bogo work it out for himself. "He's not outstanding in any way," Bogo said at last, "He graduated at the top of his class, and he's had an unblemished record ever since. Not so much as a disciplinary action."

"As I recall from when I appointed you as my captain general, you had a few of those yourself," the queen observed dryly, "Why didn't his record didn't strike you as outstanding?"

"The same reason the latest top cadet from the academy doesn't strike me as outstanding, your majesty," Bogo said.

It was a credit to the attention that the queen paid to the state of affairs of the City Guard that her answer was nearly instantaneous. "The rabbit, you mean?"

"Yes," Bogo said, nodding his head, "Both of them excelled at everything the academy teaches and tests cadets on. But neither one of them made so much as a single friend among their fellow cadets."

"Ah," the queen said, "What the academy _doesn't_ teach or test cadets on."

"The academy is supposed to build bonds between the cadets," Bogo said, "Give them mammals who understand their struggles, give them the opportunity to receive help and give it. But neither Diego Cencerro nor Judy Totchli made any such attempts. Perhaps they succeeded on their own merits, but they didn't so much as lift a finger to help their fellows."

"You might be doing them a disservice," the queen said, "From what I've heard, mammals don't always treat students doing better than them with much respect. Ostracizing someone can be a powerful bonding experience for everyone else."

"Perhaps," Bogo allowed, "But in light of what we know, I wonder how coincidental it is that the two of them were in Phoenix at the same time as each other, in the company of the kingdom's one and only fox alchemist."

"If Diego Cencerro is a suspect, then Lady Cencerro is as well," the queen said, and Bogo nodded.

"I don't know how well the two of them get along, but they are family," he said.

"Cousins," the queen said with a sigh, "And I thought I'd trust Alba with my life."

The queen was silent a long moment, and then she spoke again. "Barbarians at the gate," she said, "If we wait until we're absolutely positive that the lieutenant colonel is telling the truth, there's no telling what they might be able to do if the threat is real. And if we act now, we might be sending the City Guard into a trap. Certainly taking Phoenix out of the equation was no simple task, whether it was by barbarians or by Cencerro."

Bogo cleared his throat. "I would disagree, your majesty. It's been centuries since the City Guard has truly fought as an army. We learn the tactics and we practice with the weapons, but no one alive has the practical experience to fight an opposing army. Even the number of mammals who have experienced fighting without torcs is limited to ones who have rotated through Phoenix, and that's largely limited to arresting drunks. If barbarians truly did attack, they might have found Phoenix an easy target."

"An easy target," the queen repeated, but she didn't sound as though she was disagreeing with his assessment.

Any justification Bogo could have given would have sounded particularly weak. Blaming centuries of peace for a lack of preparation against external threats would have just showed off what was increasingly looking like appalling planning. "How do you wish to proceed, your majesty? Shall I assemble your council?" Bogo asked; there didn't seem to be much he could do other than continue plowing ahead.

"My council, which you suspect contains at least one traitor," the queen replied mildly, "Right now I would prefer your judgement, Lord Bogo."

"I recommend that I lead a force to verify and engage the barbarians if necessary. A force large enough to be successful, but not so large as to leave the Inner and Middle Baronies undefended," Bogo said crisply.

It would be a delicate juggling act; considering that three of his prime suspects had volunteered members of the personal guard to serve with the City Guard, he didn't want to leave them near the palace. Alternatively, he didn't want them to be able to ambush the actual City Guard once it was afield and no one could report it. Still, compared to the problems he normally dealt with, it didn't seem insurmountable, although he did wish he could be in two places at once. The idea of leaving the palace gave him a deeply uneasy feeling, but so did the idea of an enemy army burrowing into the Outer Baronies like a swarm of ticks that would become impossible to dislodge.

"You never knew my father, did you Lord Bogo?" the queen asked suddenly, apparently changing the topic.

"No, your majesty."

"Ah," the queen said, nodding her head, "I suppose you wouldn't, although I doubt you would have gotten along with him. When I was, oh, perhaps twelve or thirteen, I attended the doings in court, much as Isabel does now. Once, a particularly proud lord, in the midst of supplicating my father, passed flatulence. He was terribly embarrassed, of course, and fled the chamber immediately. In his humiliation, he banished himself to the Middle Baronies for a full year before daring to show his face in court again. When my father saw this worthy mammal again, do you know what he said?"

"I cannot guess, your majesty."

"He said," the queen began, and a slight smile teased at her mouth, "'Why, Lord Buey, it appears you've drifted back on the wind after ever so long. Please remind me, is there some slight you have caused the throne you wish to clear the air about?'"

"Very amusing, your majesty," Bogo replied, completely deadpan.

"I _did_ say that you likely would not have gotten along with him. I've heard he was different when he still had my mother, but I never had the opportunity to know that version of my father."

Bogo nodded. Despite what some mammals thought, he did have a sense of humor, just not a juvenile one. He had known many mammals in the City Guard who coped with the demands of the job with humor of all sorts, from groan-inducing wordplay to childish jokes to vulgar stories. The queen rarely spoke of either of her parents, both of them long-dead, but he knew that the queen had never known her mother, the ewe having died giving birth. Considering the demands that King Raul XVI had been under, it was perhaps not surprising that he had dealt with circumstances as best he could. And, in turn, Bogo could not guess at the full extent of the impact that her father had held. If King Raul had remarried, would Queen Lana have been so adamantly opposed to doing so herself? It was not a question he would have ever dared to ask, but it was impossible not to wonder. "I wished you to have the measure of him before I tell you this next story," the queen continued.

"When I was very young, no more than five or six, it was rare for me to see much of my father. He was very busy, you see, and many days I did not see him at all. When I did in the summer, when the days were longest, it was not until the sun was about to set that he would leave his royal duties and tend to me. He had a joke he was rather fond of; he would come up to me and say, "'Lenny, I think it's about time for the sun to go down, don't you? Some of our kingdom's good mammals need to sleep and others need to wake. Come, help me pull it from the sky.' He'd make a big production of it, pretending to pull on an invisible rope with all his might, cajoling me to pull harder, and the sun _would_ go down."

There was a pause, and when the queen turned to look at Bogo all traces of a smile had gone from her face. "Saying a thing does not make it true, Lord Bogo. Should someone declare themselves Emperor in my absence, it will not be so without the support of my subjects."

"Your absence, your majesty?" Bogo asked, but there was a sinking feeling in his chest.

He had realized the point that the queen was getting to; she had undermined one of his most persuasive arguments before he could even voice it. "Yes, my absence," Queen Lana said, and brought her hooves together briskly, "It is a rather simple problem. There is no one you trust to lead an army afield to deal with the threat of these 'barbarians,' but there is also no one else you—or I, I must say—trust to protect the princess should you leave to lead the army yourself. Therefore, there is only one solution. The princess and I shall accompany you, as shall _all_ my advisers and their soldiers."

Bogo repressed a sigh. The queen had just undermined his other major argument; if he could not make her stay out of fear of a coup in her absence or in the name of the safety of the princess, he knew he couldn't win. Taking along all of her advisers, who were also his chief suspects, would give them greater opportunities for betrayal outside the familiar protection of the palace but it would also limit the scheming they were capable of if he could break their lines of communication. Having the queen and princess lead the City Guard against what was either an outside threat or a coup already in progress would certainly inspire the common citizens of the kingdom; there was only one more defense that Bogo could raise.

"Your torcs won't function in the Outer Baronies, your majesty," he said, doing his best to make the words as respectful as possible, "An assassin might—"

"Yes, an assassin might have an easier time of it, knowing that they could kill the princess without dying themselves," the queen interrupted, waving one hoof dismissively, "Certainly should they succeed, it would leave less evidence as to how... How the deed was done."

Queen Lana's voice had wavered for a moment, and Bogo knew she had been imagining what it would be like to see her daughter, the mammal who meant more to her than anyone or anything in all the world, dead. "But we cannot give in to fear," the queen continued, and her voice was hard, "No monarch has left the safety of the Middle Baronies since we started using torcs."

She brushed her fingers against her own torc briefly as she spoke. "I think it time for that to change. The kingdom doesn't end at the Middle Wall, and the world doesn't end at the Outer Wall, as much as we might like it to be so. Make the arrangements for our travel."

"As you command, your majesty," Bogo said, bowing.

The queen sighed, and looked out her window over the grounds of the palace. It was subtle, but Bogo thought he could see the signs of how things had started to change since the first assassination attempt. There seemed to be extra wear on the grass from the increased patrols, and the gardeners working the grounds looked jumpy, twitching in the direction of sounds that he was too far away from to hear himself. Whether the queen noticed the same things or not, Bogo could not guess; she was perceptive but she had never served in the City Guard. What he was sure that she could not help but notice, however, were two figures on an isolated strip of ground. One of them was a goat who would have been unremarkable except for the fluid grace with which she wielded a wooden training sword. The other, also with a wooden sword but far more clumsy, had the peculiar and distinctive chimeric build of the princess.

"Perhaps someday we shall need a warrior queen," Queen Lana said quietly, watching the lopsided sparing match, "If my daughter's reign is to be one of war, I thought we had best start her along that path now."

Bogo wished he could say that he was sure that Isabel's reign, when the time eventually came, would be a peaceful one. But even as he thought the words, they had the ashy taste of a lie.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Otters really are noticeably less graceful on land than they are in water, so Bogo's perception of the lieutenant isn't solely his biases coming out. Tomas's explanation of alchemy, cut short as it is in parts, does align with what has previously been described in this story; I've consistently shown that when an object is transmuted the first step is for it to become so dark that it seems to absorb all light. Here, at least, Tomas claims that is precisely what is happening.

A swazzle is a key part of performing a Punch and Judy show, a puppet show that goes back hundreds of years. One of the characters, Punch, has a distinctly harsh and raspy voice that is created by the performer using a swazzle. The swazzle itself is, as Tomas describes, essentially just a reed surrounded by two strips of metal. The performer puts the swazzle in their mouth, between their tongue and the roof of their mouth, causing the reed to vibrate and change their voice as they speak. It takes some skill to use a swazzle properly—it's been said that no one really masters their use without swallowing one accidentally at least twice—but it definitely can make a person's voice sound rather unnatural.

The story that Queen Lana tells in this chapter of a lord being so embarrassed about passing gas in front of the monarch that he banished himself from court is inspired by a story from the court of Queen Elizabeth I. The Lord of Oxford broke wind in her presence and was so ashamed of it that he left the court and did not return for seven years, at which point the queen welcomed him back with the words, "My lord, I had forgot the fart."

It's also a nod to this story that it was Lord Buey, as "buey" is the Spanish word for "ox."

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought if you're so inclined as to leave a comment.


	29. Chapter 29

After fifteen minutes of Nick guiding them, creeping slowly through the abandoned streets, Judy wasn't impressed by the guildhall they stopped at. The building was particularly shabby, the white stones that made it up covered with lichen and other unidentifiable stains. A battered wooden sign, hanging crookedly from iron rings weeping runnels of rust, proclaimed "ADVENTURER'S GUILD" above the message "APPRENTICES WANTED." The letters looked like they had been carved by a kit, they were so uneven and lopsided, and didn't exactly inspire confidence.

If the guild had been perpetually accepting new apprentices, as the weathered nature of the sign implied, it didn't say much for their competence. Then again, perhaps they were the best that Phoenix had to offer and whatever lurked in the ruins beneath the settlement was really just that dangerous. "Don't let the name fool you," Nick said.

Despite being a fair distance away from the fissure outside Phoenix—and the army beyond it—he still spoke quietly. "They don't so much as 'adventure' as they 'loot,'" he said, the ghost of a smile touching his features, "I guess they thought it sounded better this way, though."

Judy nodded and carefully pushed the door open. Inside the guildhall, there was the same eerie feeling that the mammals inside had simply up and left. Contrasting to the somewhat grandiose name of the guild, but matching the exterior quite well, the interior was surprisingly mundane; it looked like a more ill-kept version of the City Guard barracks. The first floor seemed to be about half one large room with a pitted and scuffed wooden floor that creaked and groaned no matter how carefully they stepped. There was a small reception desk with a massive set of filing cabinets behind it, messily crammed with papers that made the drawers droop slightly from the weight. A large number of desks were scattered across the room with only the vaguest semblance to a pattern, most of them covered with sloppy stacks of paper and odd artifacts. Some of the desks had half-eaten plates of food or cast-off personal items; one had a half-oiled dagger resting atop a whetstone and another a single thick-soled boot beside it.

Nick slowly shut the front door behind them and started in the direction of the wall that separated the guild's desks from whatever took up the rest of the floor. On the way he had explained—quietly—that the best way to access the ruins under Phoenix would be through one of the many guilds dedicated to recovering useful artifacts. Judy was sure that it would have been easy enough for Nick to simply make them an opening, but she could appreciate the logic in using an existing access point that would open into tunnels and not simply drop them into one of the cavernous open parts of Quimichpatlan Barony she had seen in cross-section.

Nick paused by the door, waiting for her to join him, before he spoke again. "It occurred to me," he said softly, "That maybe that army outside got here through the same tunnels we're going to use."

"Oh," Judy said.

She froze in place, her paw reaching out for the doorknob. An image flashed through her head of twenty or so armed mammals, pouring up from the tunnels below, waiting for them on the other side of the door. "That would be bad," she said at last.

Nick sighed. "You're going to open that door, aren't you?" he asked.

"Yes."

Nick held his breath as she pulled the door open, but there were no mammals, armed or otherwise, in the next room. Judy stepped in, and after a moment Nick followed cautiously.

It was filthier than the other room, dirt seemingly ground into the floor and splattered up the walls, and was dominated by an enormous set of shelves filled with artifacts of all sorts. Somewhat incongruously, every shelf was neatly labeled with a small tag that identified what it was, covering everything from "Plates, silver" to "Candelabra, gold" to "Unknown." There were more shelves labeled "Unknown" than Judy really felt comfortable with; it seemed to her that centuries-old junk should at least be identifiable. But she had no idea what some of the items on display were; some looked almost like alchemical torches, the central stone cracked and chipped and surrounded by an elaborate mesh of bent and corroded wire. Others looked like clocks designed by an insane mammal, with a dizzying number of gears and springs set in battered cases all engraved with odd symbols. One shelf contained a few brittle-looking fragments of something that looked disturbingly like an alpaca's pelt somehow embedded in a clear crystal. There were squiggly strokes that looked like writing on the raw side of the pelt, but it wasn't any language Judy had so much as seen before, and the label on the shelf read "Unknown — Possibly Blood Magic."

"This is the sort of stuff they recover from the ruins?" Judy asked, wrenching her attention away from the bizarre collection of artifacts to look at Nick.

For his part, Nick didn't appear to have any particular interest in what was on display; he was rummaging through a set of lockers that Judy hadn't noticed set against one wall. "Hmm?" he said, emerging from one locker with a particularly odd-looking torch, "Yes, there are all kinds of things down there. That's why we want these."

He brandished the torch toward her triumphantly, but Judy simply stared at it. Most alchemical torches designed to be held followed the same general structure, just at different sizes and in sometimes slightly different shapes to make it easier for one species or another to hold them. But unlike the typical design of an elongated cylinder with an opening at one end that could be covered to hide the light the glowing stone produced, what Nick held was a blocky cube that dangled from a wire handle. It did have what looked like a standard alchemical torch opening, but set next to it was something that reminded Judy of parties—a metal shade around a glass-walled partition surrounding a wick.

Alchemical lights were so cheap that Judy had only ever seen candles on the rare occasions when her parents had tried putting on a "proper" party, and she couldn't imagine why anyone would want to include a dimmer light that needed to burn fuel as part of a lamp meant for exploring dark ruins. Nick must have noticed her puzzled expression, because he chuckled to himself. "It's a safety measure," he said, tapping one claw against the shade surrounding the fuel-burning lamp, "If this light goes out, it means the air's no good to breathe or it might explode on us."

Then he tapped the alchemical torch portion of the lamp. "And if _this_ light goes out, it means something down there is blocking alchemy from working."

"There are things that can do that?" Judy blurted, the words out of her mouth before she could think about them.

Nick raised an eyebrow at her. "Assuming you aren't forgetting the jail cell we just escaped from, yes. There are things down there that can stop alchemy."

"How? The same as the cell?"

"If the anti-alchemy array was on the shell of a giant turtle, yes."

Judy blinked at Nick, but he looked rather more serious than he usually did. "A giant turtle?" she repeated, turning it into a question.

"A turtle the size of a city block," Nick said, "Or something turtle-y, anyway."

Judy could barely imagine anything living being so enormous, but she couldn't see any sign whatsoever that Nick was joking. "Maybe the blood magicians made them to fight the alchemists," he continued after a brief pause, "There isn't exactly anyone left to ask about it, but they're probably not natural unless you think the gods have a cruel sense of humor."

"I see," Judy said after a moment; there was nothing else she could think of worth saying.

"They're called Nopalayotl, if you were wondering," Nick said.

"Because that'll help if one attacks us?" she asked.

Nick actually laughed at her little joke, but to Judy's ears it sounded a little strained. "How do you manage that, Carrots?" he asked, shaking his head, "Why doesn't anything scare you?"

"You think I'm not scared of anything?"

"You're the bravest mammal I've ever met," he said.

Judy felt her ears flushing at the compliment; it was perhaps one of the nicest things anyone had ever told her. Nick coughed, turning aside. "Or maybe the dumbest," Nick continued, "Our best bet is to get through Quimichpatlan as quickly as possible. If we run into anything, we just keep running."

"Nick," Judy said, and she reached out to grab his paw, "Thank you."

Nick turned back to look at her, cocking his head to the side and then looking down at his paw, but he didn't pull away from her grasp. He was warm to the touch, the roughness of his paw pads and the size of his fingers making him unlike any bunny. "I haven't exactly done much, you know," he said, "Wait until we're out of this mess."

"I never would have gotten out of that cell without you," Judy said, "And I don't think I can get through the ruins alone. I _need_ you."

Perhaps it was just a trick of the light, but Judy would have sworn that she saw the insides of Nick's ears flush before they fell bashfully back. "You know how to make a fox feel wanted," he said at last, pulling his paw free from her grasp and tugging at his coat, "But that was a pretty terrible prison. Rogelio only made the bars out of diamond because _real_ anti-alchemy cells have walls made out of diamond. Just be glad my proposal didn't win or we'd still be in there."

"Really?"

Nick coughed. "Well, maybe. Maybe not. Who can say?" he said, shrugging his shoulders carelessly, "Now come on, we've got everything we'll need and I'd rather just get this over with."

Despite his words, Judy thought she could see a tremble in his body as they walked towards another door on the far side of the room. Judy knew that whatever method led down to the ruins—whether it was a lift or stairs or a ladder—they would find it behind the door. Judy didn't even hesitate to open it, and she saw Nick cringe a bit away as she did. "Don't worry," she said, "No matter what, I promise you're making it back out."

Nick looked from her to the center of the room. There wasn't much to it; it was as dirty as the storeroom they had crossed through to get it, and all that was in it—besides clods of dirt that glittered in the harsh light of a single alchemical torch—was a wide and well-worn set of stairs made out of marble. It looked as though it had actually been a part of some building that had gone from the depths of Quimichpatlan Barony to the surface, although what it had been Judy couldn't guess at. Despite the lines of alchemical torches that had been somewhat haphazardly fashioned to the beautifully carved banisters, Judy couldn't see how far down the stairs went. "Well if you promise, what do I have to worry about?" Nick asked, but Judy didn't think she heard any sarcasm in his voice.

She started down the stairs, and Nick followed.

* * *

As it turned out, the staircase was quite a bit longer than Judy would have even guessed at. To her eyes, it looked like the members of the Adventurer's Guild had carved out the ground around the staircase where it had collapsed in centuries ago; in some spots large rocks protruded onto the stairs themselves, shattering the ornate banister on one side or the other. It certainly helped explain why the guildhall had been so dirty, considering the volume of earth that they must have removed, but it also meant that for a descent into a mysterious and ruined barony it was surprisingly boring.

All she could see, in the light of the alchemical torches set in the stairs and in the light of the one that Nick carried, was rough dirt walls and worn stairs. Compared to the cross-section of the barony she had seen upon approaching Phoenix, it certainly didn't give her the same sense of wonder. "It doesn't look like an army passed this way," Judy said after perhaps ten minutes of silent descent.

"I guess not," Nick said.

They were quiet a moment longer, the only sounds the muffled fall of their feet and a far-off moaning that Judy sincerely hoped was simply the wind blowing through the ruins, before Judy said, "What do you think it means, that the army had the Betrayer's banner?"

"The Betrayer?" Nick said, "More like the Patsy."

Judy didn't think she could ever remember anyone coming to Oztoyehuatl's defense; she had always been taught that the fox had been a wicked usurper. Then again, most of those lessons had also implied that Oztoyehuatl had been wicked because he was a fox, which didn't seem fair to Nick. "You don't think he betrayed Duke Ocelotl?" she asked, turning to look at him.

"Oh, no, he probably definitely did that," Nick said, "But did you ever wonder why he did it?"

Judy knew the story as well as any kit did. After Emperor Ocelotl had abdicated the throne and allowed King Oveja I to rise to power, he had been named a duke and worked tirelessly to build connections between the new regime and the old society. He had become a symbol of Zootopia's synthesis, and remained much beloved by his former subjects. Oztoyehuatl, one of the Emperor's old blood magicians, had hated how much the city had changed—especially, it was said, the ban on mammal sacrifice in performing blood magic—that he had conspired to murder King Oveja I and re-install Ocelotl on the throne to return to the old ways. Duke Ocelotl, who had been totally ignorant of the plot, immediately turned the treacherous fox in once he learned of what was planned, preventing what would have likely been years or decades of civil war and further enshrining himself as a powerful beacon of Zootopia's future.

"He wanted things back the way they were," Judy said.

"Things never go back to the way they were," Nick said, and Judy saw a shadow of something she had never seen on his face before.

What it was, she couldn't quite name, and he continued before she could think on it further. "What I mean is, if he wanted blood magicians and predators like himself to have unlimited power again, why bother trying to reinstate Ocelotl? Why not just kill the king and declare himself Emperor?"

Judy's feet stumbled a step. It wasn't a question she had ever heard asked, let alone discussed. "Because... Ocelotl was a symbol," she managed at last, "Oztoyehuatl needed him."

"Maybe," Nick allowed, "But if his entire plan hinged on Ocelotl taking the throne again, shouldn't he have done a better job making sure Ocelotl would agree to it before committing treason?"

Judy didn't have an answer to that. "Maybe Oztoyehuatl was just evil and short-sighted and blind to what the subjects of Zootopia really wanted," Nick said, and the pattern of the words caught her; one of her textbooks had described that long-dead blood magician fox in nearly the same words, and Nick had clearly read the same book.

"Or maybe Ocelotl really did want to be Emperor again and sold Oztoyehuatl out to save his own neck. Maybe mammals would have rioted in the streets if King Oveja had Ocelotl executed for treason. Maybe it would have just kicked off a war even larger than the one they just fought. Against that, what's the life of one fox who may or may not have been guilty of treason anyway?"

"If Oztoyehuatl wasn't guilty," Judy said, and it felt incredibly bizarre to be saying those words; it was like she was entertaining the notion that water was dry or the sun was cold, "He shouldn't have been punished. And if Duke Ocelotl was part of the plan, he should have been."

"Even if it led to war?"

Judy wanted to say yes. Her moral compass wanted to say that punishing the innocent or letting the guilty go free in the name of stability was a terrible crime in and of itself. Laws had to exist for a reason, and if anyone was above them they meant nothing. And yet her mind came back to what Nick had just said. _What's the life of one fox?_

Against the thousands who would have died in a bloody and terrible civil war, what was one life? "Even if it led to war," Judy repeated.

Every instinct said it was the right answer at the same time they said it was the wrong one. Nick looked surprised at her answer, and he grinned. "The rich and powerful better be afraid of you, Ensign Carrots," he said, "You keep answering like that, and you'll never make it to lieutenant."

Judy wondered how much truth there was to his words. Had Captain General Bogo made it to his rank through political manipulation, letting criminals walk free because of their connections or what it would mean for the city's stability if they were arrested? She wanted to believe that he was an honorable mammal who would have answered Nick's question with far more ease than she had. She could imagine him saying, in that gruff voice she recalled from the commencement address he had given, "Crime is crime. If we ignore criminals we _are_ criminals."

But then she could also imagine him saying, with a sort of bemused weariness, "The City Guard exists to ensure the stability of Zootopia. Nothing more and nothing less."

Dwelling on it wouldn't help any, though, and Judy forced the thoughts aside. Perhaps, once they had gotten past the ring of soldiers around Phoenix, she'd have the chance to speak directly to Captain General Bogo and hear for herself how he thought. In the meantime, though, she tried to think of what the army meant. "So maybe that army is using Oztoyehuatl's sigil because _he's_ a symbol," she said, returning to a thought that had occurred to her the first time she saw the banners.

"Maybe," Nick said, nodding agreeably, "I'm pretty sure he's long dead. Makes it a little hard to lead an army, or so I hear."

They kept walking down the staircase, which turned ninety degrees every thirty feet, and at last Judy saw something that broke up the monotony. There, thirty feet in front of them, was where the staircase ended. Dirt had been crudely moved away from a crumbling and irregular opening, supported by a surprisingly sturdy-looking array of thick wooden beams. Then again, Judy supposed that if there was one thing you didn't want to happen when your job depended on looting ruins it was having the ground collapse on you.

A dim light was coming from beyond that gateway, and Judy pressed onward. What she saw took her breath away.

Even the glimpse of the ruins she had caught from outside Phoenix hadn't prepared her for what she stood amidst; those ruins had been broken apart and exposed to weather, not to mention obviously already looted. The chamber she stood in was so massive that she couldn't see where it ended, the pools of light coming from the alchemical torches simply not reaching far enough. The ceiling might have been forty feet above her head, where the light fell just short of, or it might have been eighty or more. What she could see, though, was absolutely incredible. They were standing in what looked like a city street, except stretched out to at least four levels in height; there might have been even more levels further down where the light didn't reach. Massive ramps and walkways bridged the gaps between buildings that might have almost looked at place above ground. By and large, they weren't in ruins, either.

Elaborate mosaics of volcanic glass, silver, amber, and gold covered the walls forming crazed abstract patterns that bulged in and out into complicated three-dimensional shapes that seemed to change entirely depending on the angle Judy viewed them at. The light glittered off brightly painted storefronts, and while most of the grubby windows were empty it was obvious that it was because they had already been looted. Behind other windows, Judy could see the tattered remnants of cloth of gold and strange tools, all illuminated by the weak greenish glow of ancient alchemical torches. Here and there, scattered across the ground, were skeletons of mammals who had died centuries before her great-great-grandparents had been born, some of them half-buried in drifts of dirt. Others had obviously been excavated, and Judy felt a moment of disgust as she realized why; the members of the Adventurer's Guild had looted the jewelry off the skeletons. Some of the skeletons, though, were even stranger than Judy could have guessed at. She saw a bat skeleton that looked as though it had been partially transmuted into some kind of crystal, irregular hexagonal prisms suddenly giving way to bone. In another spot, what looked like the skeleton of a giant cat—a tiger or a lion, maybe—seemed to have been _merged_ with the bones of a bear, as though two soft bits of clay had been mashed together.

In other places, there were more obvious signs of transmutation. She saw one storefront, and the ground surrounding part of it, was made out of gold in what looked like the cross-section of a perfect sphere. The transition from gold shaped exactly like the rest of the wall to stone was so perfectly precise that it didn't seem possible alchemy hadn't been involved; so too was that the case of a different store front that had a pentagonal section simply missing. The borders of that pentagon, even centuries later, were perfectly precise, and where they cut through the contents of the store—which looked to be elaborately painted clay pots—that perfection was maintained.

Judy couldn't help but gawk, every direction she turned her head revealing a new wonder or horror. Nick, though, was simply looking at the ground. "No sign of monsters," he said, gesturing at the paw- and hoof-prints in the soft dirt, "It might not be deep enough for them."

His voice echoed weirdly in the wide open space of the buried barony, the sounds becoming clipped and distorted as they faded. Judy forced herself to examine the ground as well, and from what she could see Nick was right. The only prints she saw were for recognizable mammals; she didn't know what a monster's feet looked like—or even if they _had_ feet—but she didn't see anything that looked out of place. Besides footprints, all she saw were ruts that looked like the tracks of a cart, which she supposed might be useful depending on what the guild was pulling out of the ruins. "Which way?" Judy asked, looking around.

She had lost her orientation sometime on their descent down the stairs, but Nick simply pointed off. "That's north-east," he said, with absolute confidence, "We want to go south."

He spun to face the right direction, and Judy simply stared at him. "How did you _do_ that?" she asked, "You don't have a compass."

Nick had impressed her above ground with his sense of direction through Phoenix, but she had assumed that he simply had the settlement's layout memorized after years of visiting. She didn't see how he could have possibly repeated the feat underground; until that moment it hadn't occurred to her how they would make sure they didn't get lost with no landmarks. "I don't need one," he said, shrugging.

"Is that an alchemist trick?"

"A fox one, actually," he said, smiling slightly, "But you can think it's magic, if you'd like."

"Do you know how far we have to go?" Judy asked.

Nick shrugged. "We'll know when we get to the fissure," he said, "Once we get past it, we can go up more or less wherever we want."

It made sense to her, and she started off in the direction Nick had indicated. They walked in silence, the only sound their footsteps and that far off moaning of wind. "Nick?" Judy said suddenly.

"Yes, Carrots?" he replied.

"I think you're braver than you give yourself credit for."

He was silent a moment. "Thanks," he said, and she felt his tail brush past her leg.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

The design of a typical hand-held alchemical torch is, of course, inspired directly by a typical flashlight. There have been a few references in earlier chapters that alchemical torches are essentially always on, and thus if you don't want them to glow you need to cover them.

The lamp that Nick "borrows" from the guild is inspired by safety lamps, which were first created for coal miners in the 19th century. In the days before electric lighting, the means of providing miners with light was a serious problem. Open flames, like candles, could cause combustible gases that built up in mines to cause explosions, or even just cause fine particulate to combust. Safety lamps were cleverly designed to not only not cause explosions, but also to indicate the air quality. Some were designed such that they would go out if there was too high a concentration of explosive gas or too low a concentration of oxygen, either being situations where the miner would want to get out.

"Nopalayotl" would literally mean "cactus turtle" in the Nahuatl language. What that implies is left to your imagination.

This chapter finally gives a more or less full description of what Oztoyehuatl the Betrayer is considered to be guilty of. As established way back at the beginning of this story, the ruling emperor was deposed and became a duke under the new regime; this fills in some more details as to how the official version of that story goes.

Red foxes in real life do indeed have what appears to be some kind of sense of where magnetic north-east is; although nothing has been proven definitively, it certainly appears as though they have the ability to sense magnetic fields. I figure that's a useful trick that Nick has up his sleeve when it comes to finding his way around, and it'd be one that he'd find largely unremarkable himself. It'd be like someone with normal color vision distinguishing between green and red; if you have the sense it's simply obvious to you.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to comment, I'd love to know what you thought.


	30. Chapter 30

Time was always the enemy. It wasn't a lesson that anyone had ever deliberately told Bogo, but a conclusion he had drawn himself over the years. When he had been a lieutenant, it was why he could barely patrol his entire beat on a single shift and why so many petty thieves got away when it took him too long to get to the crime scene. When he had been a captain, and he had missed so much of his own daughter growing up, it was because there weren't enough hours in the day to do everything he needed to. And now, as he planned to lead an army to Phoenix he couldn't help but wonder if he would be too late.

For the moment, though, there was little that he could do but wait. For most of the trip out of the center of the city-state the speed at which they were moving was entirely outside his control, which wasn't a particularly comforting thought as he stood watching out the porthole of the office aboard his ship. That he could travel by ship was, at least, a sign that the mammals who had designed Zootopia so many years ago had known what they were doing. The massive aqueducts that radiated out from the center of Zootopia were far wider and deeper than they needed to be if they had only been intended for moving water. They had, in fact, been designed to allow the easy use of watercraft for the movement of mammals and cargo from the center to the Middle Baronies. Each aqueduct also had a companion running the opposite direction, the water flowing from the Middle Baronies back towards the Inner Baronies in an enormous cycle. Where the aqueducts flowing into the Inner Baronies terminated was simply a vast circular canal, but where they ended at the border of the Middle Baronies were tremendous waterfalls with City Guard fortifications built atop them, massive stone grills preventing ships from going over the edge of the Middle Wall.

Bogo had made many trips to the Middle Baronies, mostly for inspection tours, but he had never traveled so fast. The gentle slope of the aqueducts was enough to take an unpowered ship from the center of the Inner Baronies to the edge of the Middle Baronies in about a day, and that was generally fast enough for most cargo. The ship he was aboard, however, had a massive alchemical engine spinning a pair of paddle wheels so fast that he could feel the vibrations coming up through the deck. The cargo area was full of members of the City Guard and their equipment, and he had five other ships all doing the same. All told, there were just over two thousand mammals as part of the expedition, which he could only hope would be enough. If he had the time—or additional ships he could commandeer from the Guild of Water Merchants—Bogo might have been able to bring more soldiers, but the two thousand he had picked were the ones he could trust and that the Inner Baronies could spare. Once again, it all came down to time. Bogo shook his head, repressing a sigh, and forced himself to look away from the porthole and its view of the outskirts of the Inner Baronies speeding past and made his way out of his cabin.

The ship he was aboard was one of the few that the City Guard owned outright; it had been built as an odd combination of a luxury ship for the reigning monarch and a troop transport. What that meant, in practical terms, was that everything below the waterline was as charmless and efficient as any cargo ship, but half of the cabins above the waterline were plushly furnished and the exterior of the ship was extensively and elaborately gilded. Bogo's own cabin, although only about twice the size of his cramped hidden bedroom in his office in the palace, was larger than that of the ship's captain, and the queen had a suite of rooms that were only small by royal standards. It was to the queen's suites that he made his way, having to turn sideways to get his broad shoulders through the cramped passageways; the designers of the ship apparently hadn't considered the possibility that a buffalo would be the head of the City Guard.

Once he was admitted to the royal suite by a pair of guards, the scene was much as he had expected it to be. In what would have been a parlor, had the queen simply been on a pleasure cruise, an ornately carved circular table intended for card games had been re-purposed as a conference table. The queen sat at it with a rather unhealthy-looking greenish pallor to her skin where it was visible under her wool; Bogo knew she suffered from sea-sickness even from the gentle motion of a boat on a lake, and the way the rapidly moving ship vibrated and occasionally bounced in the water had to be an agony for her. As befitted her station, she hadn't so much as mentioned her discomfort, although Bogo strongly suspected that she wouldn't be able to eat anything until solid ground was under her hooves again. At the queen's side, the princess sat, her expression bright and interested; she apparently didn't suffer from water travel the way her mother did and seemed to be actually enjoying the ride. The other chairs at the table were empty, but there were four, intended for Bogo, Corazón, Cerdo, and Cencerro.

Bogo took his seat, nodding respectfully in the direction of the queen and princess first. "Your majesties," he said.

"Lord Bogo," the queen said, her voice somewhat stiffer than usual; Bogo suspected that she was trying to concentrate on anything other than how sick she was feeling.

In better times, the queen had never used the ship built first for her grandfather, preferring instead to travel by ground when she left the Inner Baronies. She had, however, understood the need to move as quickly as possible, and had even been the one to suggest the use of the ship. "The rest of your council will join us shortly," he said, and she nodded.

Again at the queen's suggestion, they hadn't bothered to hold a council meeting to discuss the situation at Phoenix. Bogo had marshaled his soldiers as quickly as possible, and then had simply ordered Corazón, Cerdo, and Cencerro aboard the lead ship, taking a not inconsiderable amount of pleasure from the act. The queen's logic was simple; she wouldn't give them the chance to plot and scheme until they were already aboard the ship. The ship had been underway for almost an hour, and it was time to provide them with an update.

A few minutes went by and the three mammals entered, obviously confused but not daring to voice their displeasure directly. "I acknowledge that the manner in which we're meeting is unusual," the queen began, once everyone was seated, "But time is not our friend right now."

Bogo didn't speak, but he couldn't help but notice that the queen's thoughts seemed to echo his own. But then, he supposed her life had also reinforced the idea that time would do everything it could to slip out of your grasp. He turned his focus to the three other members of the council, and saw that Princess Isabel was doing the same; whether she was seeing anything he could not was impossible to say as her expression was a neutral mask.

To Bogo's eye, Lady Cencerro looked mildly queasy, but perhaps she simply shared the queen's tendency toward seasickness. Or perhaps she was nervous about being found out; whatever the case Bogo mentally filed the observation away. Lord Corazón appeared simply interested, propping his head up with one massive arm on the little table as he stared intently at the queen. Lord Cerdo's pudgy face was creased in confusion, or perhaps concentration, and like Corazón he seemed to be hanging on to every word. "We have received word from Lieutenant Colonel Diego Cencerro that Phoenix was attacked by barbarians from beyond the Outer Wall," the queen continued.

It had been Bogo's idea that she be the one to explain the situation; it would better allow him to focus on how the other members of the council reacted to the news if he didn't also have to share it. "That's impossible!" Lord Cerdo interrupted, and then he waved one arm hastily, "My apologies for interrupting, your majesty, but how could _barbarians_ possibly have attacked? There's nothing but wastelands outside the wall."

"Have you ever been outside the Outer Wall?" the queen asked, and there was a dangerous edge to her voice, polite though it was.

"Well, no, but—" the pig began, and the queen cut him off.

"It is true that what can be seen from Phoenix of the land beyond the Outer Wall is nothing but uninhabited scrublands," the queen continued smoothly.

Although the queen had never been to Phoenix, she delivered the words with perfect poise, as though she was simply sharing an observation of her own rather than what she had learned from reports. Years of those reports had suggested that Cerdo was right; no one had ever observed alchemical torches or even fires off in the distance beyond the Outer Wall. Still, Bogo was more interested in the objection than he was in the truth of the matter. If one of the other council members were to reveal something, it might be by objecting too strenuously or attempting to guide the conversation along certain paths rather than by revealing something only the culprit behind the events could know. And while Bogo didn't suspect Cerdo nearly as strongly as he did Corazón and Cencerro, anything that might save him the trouble of executing his more complicated trap would be useful.

"However," the queen said, raising one finger and looking directly at Cerdo, "We have a very limited understanding of what's outside of Zootopia. The watchtowers along the Outer Wall have gone unused for generations, and Phoenix is our only view out. Were you to peer through a keyhole, you would not dare to say with perfect confidence that you could see everything within the room, would you, Lord Cerdo?"

"No, your majesty," the pig said humbly, bowing his head and averting his eyes.

"It is true that we currently have very limited information to work off of," the queen said, "As of now, all we have is the message that the Lieutenant Colonel provided."

The queen nodded in Bogo's direction, and he pulled the message out from an inner pocket and gave it to her. With a minor touch of theatrical flair, the queen carefully smoothed it out on the table and read it aloud. Again, Bogo watched carefully as the council members reacted to the terse message and its plea for assistance. This time, it was Cencerro who had the greatest reaction; the little sheep's brow furrowed and her eyes widened. "Your majesty," Cencerro started, a touch timidly once the queen had finished reading, "If I may interrupt?"

The queen nodded graciously. "You haven't heard anything more from Diego? He's my cousin, you know, and the way that was worded... Well, it certainly sounds like Diego, but I want to know that he's fine and he rescued as many mammals as he possibly could," Cencerro said.

 _That was an interesting tactic_ , Bogo thought to himself as he repressed a frown. Everyone at the table would know that Diego Cencerro was her cousin—considering they shared a family name, it would be blatantly obvious even if they hadn't known ahead of time—but Lady Cencerro had deliberately called attention to that fact. Was her interest in his safety truly out of familial concern, or was she attempting to portray herself as innocent by being the first to acknowledge the relation as though it was of no concern?

Princess Isabel's expression, Bogo noted, had collapsed into a slight frown, but she quickly reached across the little table and patted Lady Cencerro's hoof. "We can hope he's fine," she said sympathetically, "I'm sure the two of you are close."

Considering the princess's age and relative lack of political experience compared to everyone else around the table, Bogo had to admire her play; she was maneuvering Cencerro into a position to be forced to reveal more than she might want to. Acknowledging a close relationship make her seem suspicious if the conversation drifted toward the possibility that the Lieutenant Colonel had made up the threat, but denying it could make it look like she was trying to distance herself. "Well, I wouldn't say we're _especially_ close," Lady Cencerro said with a nervous-sounding chuckle, "But he is family, and I can't help but worry about him and all those poor mammals. He always was a little strange."

"A little strange in what way?" Corazón asked, "Do you suppose he might be lying? Do you think this might be a trap we're heading into? Your majesty, if there is any chance that your safety might be—"

"I have considered the risk to the safety of myself and the princess," the queen interrupted, her tone firm, "And concluded that it is a necessary one."

Bogo considered the interactions that had just played out. Although Corazón had been the first to raise the possibility that Diego Cencerro was lying, Lady Cencerro had given him the perfect opportunity to ask the question. Coincidence, perhaps, or maybe an indicator that the two were conspiring together. It was also possible that Corazón was doing nothing more than trying to make Lady Cencerro look bad, no matter how full of concern his rich voice had seemed.

"However, I _would_ value your opinion, Lady Cencerro," the queen continued gently, and she put her own hoof atop the other sheep's as her daughter had a moment before, "Do you suppose Diego Cencerro might be conspiring against the throne?"

"Oh, no, certainly not," Lady Cencerro said, "When I said he was strange, all I meant was that he was a little shy when he was a lamb. Almost as though he was in his own little world, sometimes, and I don't think I ever heard him laugh. We didn't see each other very often, but from what I heard he excelled in the academy."

It was a rather definite statement that she had just made, one that would make her seem all the more suspicious as a possible co-conspirator if Diego Cencerro was lying. Which didn't mean that Bogo would consider Lady Cencerro any less suspicious; sometimes maneuvering yourself into a better position involved putting yourself in a worse one first. "Did he, Lord Bogo?" Cerdo asked, leaning across the table to look up into Bogo's face, "Surely you'd be the one to know."

"His service record is spotless," Bogo said simply, "A fact that was taken into account when he was assigned to his post as the head of the Phoenix City Guard."

"Well he certainly _sounds_ trustworthy," Corazón said, gesturing grandly, "Perhaps we might continue, then."

Bogo studied the lion's seemingly guileless face. Had _he_ involved Diego Cencerro in a conspiracy, and was now trying to get the conversation off the topic? The queen might have been thinking along similar lines, for she glanced at the lion briefly before continuing. "Lord Bogo has assembled a combination of the City Guard and the personal guards you have each so kindly volunteered," she said, pausing briefly to glance around the table at each of the council members, "To evaluate the threat. Once we arrive at the edge of the Middle Baronies, we'll rendezvous with Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro at the War Gate—if he's made it that far, or on the road if he hasn't—and press onward to Phoenix."

Although Bogo could appreciate the care that had been put into making Zootopia's aqueduct system a viable means of transport, their design also betrayed something of a paranoid streak that he couldn't bring himself to disagree with. Although they formed the fastest route to the Middle Wall, they didn't have a direct path _through_ the wall. The long-ago designers had staggered the gates apart from the aqueducts such that they'd have to travel part of the distance around the inner curve of the wall before leaving. It was, Bogo knew, intended to make the city more difficult to invade; attackers would be unable to take a direct route from the edge of the Outer Wall to the heart of Zootopia. Of course, the very existence of the War Gate proved that it was a better idea in theory than it had been in practice. The War Gate was not only a monument to the long ago war when the Oveja dynasty had taken power but also one as to how they had done so, marking the point where the Middle Wall had been breached to circumvent the existing gates.

Still, it meant that there was a reasonably fast path from the aqueduct that pointed most closely in Phoenix's direction to a way through the Middle Wall, and Bogo wasn't about to complain about it. "May I ask why you have decided to accompany this force?" Corazón asked, "Begging your pardon, your majesty, but would not the palace be safer for you and the princess?"

It was the question that Bogo was sure everyone but the princess and he himself was wondering, and it was interesting that Corazón was the first to ask it. It was also the second time that Corazón had suggested his concern for the queen's safety, and again Bogo considered the motive. The problem, he supposed, with being confronted with the existence of a real yet murky conspiracy was not knowing precisely how paranoid it was appropriate to be.

"In light of the recent attacks on the princess, I consider ourselves safest while in Lord Bogo's presence," the queen said.

Everyone turned to look at Bogo, as he knew that they would; the queen had strongly implied that she trusted him far more than any of the others. What they drew from that conclusion, Bogo couldn't say; Cerdo had simply nodded to himself while both Corazón and Cencerro kept their faces neutral. In Cencerro's case, at least, as neutral as she could look while still seeming vaguely queasy. "I see," Cencerro said.

The queen smiled slightly. "You're wondering, I'm sure, why I've brought all of you along. I'm sure you can all understand the need for smooth cooperation between the members of your own personal guards you've volunteered and the City Guard," the queen said with a casualness that Bogo found impressive.

She had managed to make it sound like a trivial detail, and he hoped the others wouldn't catch its true importance. "Lord Bogo will meet with each of you individually to go over the arrangements. That covers everything for now, I believe; you are all dismissed."

There it was. The queen had provided him, as they had arranged, with the perfect opportunity to set out his bait for the council members to see. And, Bogo thought as he stood up from the table, while none of the others knew it yet, at least one of them would be walking into a trap the instant they entered his cabin.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

The aqueducts that the army is using for the first leg of their journey have been mentioned a few times before in this story; in chapter 12 Bogo watches the setting sun glint off the water in them from the palace, and in chapter 13 Judy notes that they only go as far as the ends of the Middle Baronies. Although the Romans, easily the most famous of aqueduct builders, didn't really use theirs for the transport of anything but water, that hasn't always been the case. In the 17th century the building of navigable aqueducts became more common as a means of linking canals to get cargo around more easily.

It took Judy about a day of travel to reach the edge of the Middle Baronies traveling from more or less the center of the city-state, but Bogo and his army are moving significantly faster. Rank, after all, does have its privileges, and taking ships as fast as they can go on a straight-path water way helps.

Paddle wheel driven ships were the major predecessor to modern screw-driven ships, and are significantly faster than either rowing or using a sail. Screw drives didn't become common until around the 19th century, but experiments with putting paddle wheels on boats date to about when steam engines were first invented. The ship Bogo is aboard has an alchemical engine rather than something that burns wood or coal; the modern era of this story is not without its marvels.

Unlike some mammals, but like humans, sheep can vomit. Seasickness also isn't a uniquely human phenomenon, as some animals will also become ill.

Chapter 13 did mention that beyond the Outer Wall there appears to be nothing but scrublands, and this chapter goes a bit more into what's been observed out there. The War Gate is the same gate that Judy left through all the way back in chapter 1; as mentioned there it was built where a hole was punched through the wall long ago.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment I'd love to know what you thought.


	31. Chapter 31

Judy had never particularly cared for history when she had been younger. Her tutors in the subject had been more concerned with her ability to remember family lineages and dates than in giving her any real understanding of what had happened. With a few exceptions, such as the story of how the Oveja line had taken over Zootopia and ushered it into a new age of cooperation and peace, history had never been more than a series of dry facts.

But as she and Nick hurried through the ruins of Quimichpatlan Barony, Judy couldn't help but wonder if her teachers had known the awe-inspiring truth of the past and simply hadn't passed it on to her or if they really hadn't cared about anything but those rote facts. Everything they passed seemed to call out for further study, giving hints at the sorts of mammals who had lived and died centuries ago.

They passed buildings that were recognizably restaurants, some with names chiseled into the rock in the Old Tongue that Judy could half-read. They passed countless shops and apartment buildings, some of them bearing the curious impact of an unimaginable alchemy. One building had iridescent stepped cubes bulging tumor-like from its side. Another seemed to have been partially transmuted into sand that piled in drifts around the collapsed wall. Here and there alchemical torches, dim and green with age, provided ghostly illumination beyond what the lantern Nick carried provided, but there were always lurking shadows. Judy got the feeling that the path they were taking hadn't been traveled by looters from the Adventurer's Guild, or even any other mammal in recent history; the ground was thick with undisturbed dust and the air had an unpleasantly musty smell.

After perhaps half an hour they had to go down an alley after the path they were following simply ended in rubble. Before the barony had been destroyed, the alley, the walls of which were covered with illegible graffiti and rude carvings, would have ended at the wall of a building. Instead, however, the titanic forces that had spelled the barony's doom had split the building the wall belonged to in two, and the path directly through a number of building stretched off as far as the lantern light carried.

"It's the right direction," Nick said, and they plunged onward.

It was very strange to be walking through the cross-sections of buildings, many of which seemed to have survived largely intact. It reminded Judy of nothing more than a dollhouse, built without a back wall to allow play. In some places, whatever had split the buildings had also brought debris from upper floors—rusting chairs, broken bits of pottery, assorted pieces of metal—onto the path they walked. Despite that, the way through was still clear enough for them, although a larger mammal might have had a harder time; in some spots there was barely two or three feet of clearance.

Most of the buildings they passed through seemed surprisingly mundane, shops and restaurants and the ruins of apartments. But when they came to one of the last buildings before the path opened back up into one of the cavernous empty spaces that dominated the barony, Judy froze.

There was no question in Judy's mind that it had been a classroom of some sort; there were rows and rows of small metal desks, all facing the same direction. Whatever papers had once been in the room had long since rotted away or crumbled to nothing, but at nearly twenty of the desks were dust-covered bones.

Small bones.

"These were children," Judy said, and she suddenly felt a sickening pull in the pit of her stomach.

Nick came to a stop a step in front of her and lifted the lantern until the class was more or less entirely lit.

Nick nodded. "They were," he said, "If you destroy a barony, it's not just the ones in charge who die."

Judy stared at the nearest skull, which looked as though it had once belonged to an opossum no more than seven or eight years old. The opossum's bones had yellowed and collapsed into a brittle-looking pile, but the teeth in the skull resting atop the desk were still a gleaming pearly white in a grim parody of a smile. It—and all the other piles of bones—had been alive once, and for nothing more than the crime of being born in Quimichpatlan Barony they had died. How many other children had died when King Oveja II ordered the barony razed? How many innocents had lost their lives along with the guilty conspirators?

 _Or perhaps_ , a voice that sounded like Nick's whispered in Judy's mind, _there never_ were _any conspirators._

"This never should have happened," Judy said, looking out into the ruins of the classroom.

Time had swept away the identities of the dead, but her imagination filled in the gaps. She could picture her own younger siblings fidgeting at the desks, bored with whatever the teacher was explaining, eagerly looking forward to going to play. Judy could imagine clumsily-made drawings tacked onto the walls, done by kits with far more enthusiasm than talent. She could imagine a thousand little stories playing out in the tomb-silent space, everything and more she had ever experienced herself when she had been young.

"We can't change the past," Nick replied simply, and he lowered the lantern.

Perhaps it was her imagination, but Judy thought she heard something wistful in his voice, and she wondered what kinds of regrets he had buried in his heart. "Something like this can't ever happen again," she said firmly.

They had begun to walk again, leaving behind the classroom, and Nick shot her a sidelong glance. "And maybe if the City Guard was all like you, it wouldn't," he said.

Judy frowned, but she couldn't help but think of Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro and the book they had taken from his office. Nick had carefully packed it in his bag, and she wondered at what exactly the sheep had planned. What had he done with the residents of Phoenix?

They walked in silence a while longer, and eventually were no longer walking through buildings. They were in something that looked like it might have been a massive public square centuries ago. The ceiling was barely visible high overhead, which twinkled with the feeble lights of ancient alchemical torches. Massive stalactites, covered with blurred carvings descended from that ceiling, in some places forming enormous columns where they had grown long enough to merge into the floor. Planter beds were neatly arranged around gravel-lined paths, full of the dusty remnants of whatever flowers or shrubs had once been cultivated for public enjoyment deep underground. Unlike any above ground park Judy had ever encountered, the paths that led out of the park were tunnels going through the earth rather than open roads. There were more than a dozen, and all of them quickly became pitch-black where the light didn't reach far enough.

Nick pointed out one tunnel, which looked no different from any of the others. "That one," he said, "It'll take us to the fissure."

His voice was low, and Judy could understand why; the barony had seemed to get darker and darker as they traveled further away from the entrance they had used, and it was easy to imagine all kinds of horrors lurking silently in the hidden corners. "How are you sure?" Judy asked.

"The tunnels down here are all laid out more or less the same," he said with a shrug, "That one goes the right direction, and it'll branch off a few times so even if the main path is blocked we won't have to backtrack too much."

He spoke with perfect confidence, and a question suddenly occurred to Judy that she hadn't even thought to ask. "You've been down here before?"

"When I was younger," he said, with another shrug Judy suspected he meant to be careless but wasn't quite casual enough for that, "I'm sure you can understand why I quit doing it."

Judy nodded. She'd have to remember to ask him about that once they were back above the surface; although she hadn't known him very long she had noted that he very rarely said anything about his past, especially not so directly. "Then let's get out of here as fast as possible," Judy said, and they walked off in the direction Nick had indicated.

* * *

The tunnel they had gone down had been carved out of the earth itself, but it wasn't just raw stone. Signs in the Old Tongue—street names, probably—were carved into it where other tunnels branched off, and obvious care had been taken to make it inviting. There were alcoves for alchemical torches every ten feet or so, but none of them actually had torches anymore. When Judy examined one of the gaps more closely, she saw that it looked as though something large and wickedly sharp had pulled the lamp free, and when Nick noticed her looking he quietly said, "I did say there were monsters down here."

It meant that the only light was the lantern that Nick carried, which was enough to light up the entire width of the tunnel but didn't even come close to banishing the shadows in front of and behind them. The light sparkled and reflected off carved panels of cut crystal set into the walls, arranged into abstract mosaics that somehow vaguely reminded Judy of plants and vines. In some places, the little chips of crystal had fallen out of the wall, leaving behind yawning voids. Every now and then, they came across delicate piles of bones that had unmistakably belonged to bats, the distinctively elongated finger bones crumbling into pieces. Otherwise, the tunnel was clear, and it eventually opened up into a wider space.

It might have been another public park like the one that they had left to enter the tunnel, but if it had once had alchemical torches set into the ceiling they had long-since failed. Or been removed by whatever had pulled out the lights in the tunnel, but Judy didn't see any point in dwelling on that. Nick brought the lantern higher, and they carefully set off across the cavernous space. The floor was tiled in interlocking geometric patterns, but it was all that was visible; once they had gone far enough in that she couldn't see the tunnel they had come from Judy knew she'd never find her way back without a light. Judy felt a twinge of envy at Nick's apparently flawless sense of direction even without the sun, stars, or a compass to navigate by, but she pushed it aside. After all, she had the next best thing to having his sense of direction. She had him.

Nick was apparently making an effort to move quietly, and Judy did the same as they slowly crossed the space. Judy kept waiting for a wall to become visible, but one didn't appear, as though they had stumbled across a never-ending plain.

"Nick," something suddenly said in Judy's voice.

Judy froze. She hadn't said anything, but whatever had spoken had perfectly imitated her. "Nick?" Judy asked, "What was that?"

The light that the lantern threw off, bright though it was, only formed a little bubble of light around them, illuminating nothing more than the beautiful floor and motes of dust in the air. The voice had come from within that darkness, perhaps a hundred yards from where they were if she was judging the distance from sound alone correctly. "Ehecatls," Nick said, and then before she could ask him what that meant, he added, "They're like flying snakes, if snakes hunted in packs. They don't like light, though, so we'll be fine."

"And they can talk?" Judy asked.

"No more than a bird can. It's just imitation," Nick said, shrugging.

"We'll be fine," a voice came again, speaking in Nick's voice.

To Judy's sensitive ears, it sounded as though the thing—the Ehecatl—had moved between the times it had spoken. Or perhaps there were more than one lurking about. No matter how she strained her eyes, she couldn't see anything. But was it her imagination, or could she hear a rustling papery sound, like the scales of some enormous snake scratching against rock? "We'll be fine," the voice repeated, and then it chuckled, its imitation of Nick still perfect.

Judy shot a quick glance in Nick's direction. His ears were back, his face tense with apparent anxiety, and she reached out to squeeze his paw. "We _will_ be fine," she said, as reassuringly as she could manage.

Nick gave her a shaky grin. "If you say so, Carrots."

They kept walking, and Judy heard that rustling slither again. "We'll be fine, Carrots," Nick's voice called out from the dark, perhaps two hundred yards behind them.

The thing chuckled again in his voice, and Judy could see the fur of Nick's tail frizzing out. She squeezed his paw again. "We've got a light," she said, and Nick nodded.

She could all but see the effort it cost him to push down his worry, and he took a deep, shaky breath.

If the Ehecatls were following them, they did so so quietly that not even Judy's keen ears could hear them, and they didn't speak again. After what felt like hours, but could have only been minutes, the far wall of the cavern came into view. Much like the first park they had passed through, there were a number of tunnels set into the wall, but what was visible in their pool of light didn't look to be in quite so good a shape. The tunnels all had an oddly melted look to them, the stone having flowed and re-hardened. In some of them, thick columns of stone had formed that all but completely blocked them, and others were full of debris. The one Nick picked was reasonably intact, but the delicate little shards of crystal that had once been set into the walls like the last tunnel had pooled on the floor, mixed in with the stone.

As they continued down the tunnel, passing other tunnels that branched off in various states of decay, Judy gradually became aware of the musty odor of the barony becoming stronger. The sickly stench of decay was mixed with something primal and unpleasant she couldn't put into words, something unlike anything she had ever smelled before. After about half an hour of walking, the smell was so bad that Judy almost felt as though she would gag on it, and some part of her mind warned her that whatever had created the stench was something that had once lived and breathed. And, perhaps, still did.

They pressed onward, though, coming to another incredibly dark and massive junction point. When they had crossed about four hundred yards—Judy wasn't sure how close they were to the middle since it was too dark to tell—Nick suddenly threw out his arm. "We need to go back. _Now_ ," he said, pulling at her arm.

Judy was about to ask why, but as they spun around she saw that the flame inside the lantern had gone out while the alchemical torch was still providing brilliant light. She remembered his warning about what that meant, that the air was no longer good to breath, and offered no protest. "We can backtrack to the next junction and take the one on the right," he said, "Don't worry, we'll get there."

To Judy, it sounded more like he was trying to convince himself that there was no reason to worry, but she simply nodded. She didn't feel as though she wasn't getting enough air to live on, but then again she had never suffocated. Perhaps it felt normal right up until the point where you keeled over dead. They were keeping a rapid pace, their nails clicking against the warped and wavy stone of the floor, when suddenly it shuddered beneath them. Nick was knocked off his feet, and Judy kept her balance only a moment longer before she joined him on the floor; she could hear the incredible grind of stone against stone coming from far below. Judy had never experienced an earthquake herself, but she wasn't afraid; they just needed to avoid being crushed by falling rocks or swallowed by fissures. A panicked expression had come over Nick's features, though, and Judy called out as reassuringly as she could, "It's just an earthquake, right? There's no reason to panic."

Judy saw Nick open his muzzle to begin saying something, and then the alchemical torch in his lantern suddenly winked out. They were plunged into the most absolute darkness Judy had ever experienced; it was as though she had gone completely blind. "It's a Nopalayotl!" Nick said, his voice suddenly high and shrill, "It must be levels beneath us. We've got to move!"

The shuddering of the earth continued even as Judy staggered to her feet. By the sound of Nick's voice she had found him and pulled him up. "Which way?" she called, shouting to be heard over the crunch of stones beneath them and the more whispery sounds of pebbles that had been shaken loose falling from the ceiling.

"This way!" Nick called, pulling her into a run as he set off.

In the pitch-blackness Judy had no idea if they were heading back the way they had come or not, but it didn't matter. The sense of urgency in Nick's voice was undeniable, and suddenly she wanted nothing more badly than to have light again. Even Nick's superior night vision didn't seem to be helping him in the complete darkness; she could feel him stumbling, pulling at her arm as he tried moving as fast as he could over the uneven and shifting floor.

The alchemical torch wasn't coming back to life, though, and they kept running as fast as they could before Judy's paw was suddenly yanked out of Nick's. "Carrots!" Nick cried out, "Help—"

His voice was suddenly cut off, and she heard a raspy choking sound. "Nick!" Judy yelled, spinning her head as she tried to trace the direction he had been pulled off in, "Where are you?"

"Carrots!" Nick's voice called, coming from a dozen different directions.

The word reverberated and overlapped, the words all sounding exactly like Nick. It could have only been an Ehecatl that had grabbed him, and now the pack of them was preventing her from telling where he really was. Judy dropped her spear and drew her sword; she had no idea how tough the monsters were but wanted her sharpest weapon. She heard something lunge at her, the air ruffling over its feathers, and she stabbed with all the strength she could muster.

The blade suddenly met resistance, and an unearthly piercing wail filled the air as the thing she had stabbed writhed in agony. For an instant she nearly lost her grip on the hilt, but as the monster twisted the keen edge of the blade pulled free of its flesh with almost no resistance. "Nick!" Judy called again.

The cry of "Carrots!" came again from all directions, but Judy heard something else.

Barely audible over the louder cries and the shaking of the earth was a voice nearly too weak and faint to hear. It had spoken a single word: "Judy."

Judy threw herself in that direction, crying wordlessly. She heard something lunge at her nearly too late to act and she swung her sword out. The creature she hit gave out a rasping choke and then there was a muffled thump as it hit the ground. "Nick!" a monster screamed in her own voice.

It was the most nightmarish fight Judy had ever been a part of, totally blind and with the ground shaking around her. She didn't dare think about how to react to the Ehecatls; she couldn't even tell how many there were. She could only strike out when the sussuring of their feathers told her ears they were within striking distance, and she swung her sword with almost no technique. The hilt grew hot and sticky with their blood, but there seemed to be no end to them. "You'll have to kill me!" she roared, "Let go of him!"

It didn't matter that they couldn't understand her; she refused to give up the fight until she won or was dead on the ground. The monsters seemed happy to oblige her, shrieking a horrible mixture of wordless shouts and things she or Nick had said, until suddenly with a popping hiss a light flared into being not even two feet from where she was standing.

Judy got her first glimpse of the Ehecatls and recoiled in revulsion; to say that they were like flying snakes didn't sell the true horror of them. They were perhaps seven or eight feet long, their bodies thicker than her thighs and covered with scaly gray feathers except their heads and dead white bellies. Like snakes, they had no legs, but they had massive feathered wings nearly the size of their entire bodies. The feathers looked almost nothing like a bird's, though; they had a too-perfect geometric appearance to them, more like something drawn with a straight edge than anything the gods had created. Their heads were the worst part of them, massive and wedge-shaped and a horrible mix of parts that didn't go together. The Ehecatls had wickedly curved beaks, like a bird of prey, but with the slithering forked tongue and fangs of a snake in an overly-pink mouth lined with wickedly hooked rasps. The heads were grotesquely scaly, red and almost raw-looking where their feathers didn't grow. A crown of gray and black feathers grew from around the transition point where the scales stopped and the feathers started like a crude imitation of a lion's mane. The eyes were awful; each monster had four, or perhaps two depending on how you counted them. On either side of the monsters' heads two eyes seemed to have partially _merged_ , with two unblinking slit pupils in an immobile bulb of flesh shaped like a fat figure-eight.

Judy saw the light was coming from the gas lamp of Nick's lantern, and Nick himself was buried under a pile of the horrible monsters that seemed to be trying to squeeze the life out of him. At the sudden burst of light the Ehecatls all shrieked as one, rolling their bodies jerkily in agony as their lidless and horrible eyes wept milky white tears.

They slithered and flapped, squawking and making inarticulate cries of pain as they slipped and flew in hop-skips away. Four or five of them were dead on the ground, spilling slowly growing pools of blood, but Judy only had eyes for Nick. He stirred feebly, clutching at the lantern; Judy saw matches scattered on the ground around him. "Nick!" Judy cried, and ran over to him.

He flopped onto his back and smiled weakly at her. "Told you," he rasped, "As long as we have a light..."

He shuddered and didn't seem to be able to say more. Judy couldn't help herself; it didn't matter that she was splattered with the gore of the monsters she had killed or that she was still holding a sword, she needed to hug him, to be sure that he really was alright. After a moment, he gently returned her embrace, patting her on the back. She didn't want to think about how close he had come to dying, but she couldn't help that either. What if he hadn't been able to light the lantern? What if she hadn't been able to distract some of the monsters? Would she have been overwhelmed herself, and would they have both died beneath Phoenix?

But they hadn't, and she pulled Nick to his feet. The ground was still trembling, although not nearly as badly as it had been, and the alchemical torch in the lantern still stubbornly refused to work.

There was a moment—a perfect, shining moment—when it was just the two of them standing there in their little pool of light looking at each other. It was a moment unlike anything Judy had ever experienced with anyone else; Judy realized that she had never cared about someone in quite the same way. And from the way that Nick looked back at her she thought maybe he was thinking the same thing. "I—" she began, and then she saw that one of the Ethecals on the ground wasn't dead.

Its eyes had been blinded by the blood of its fellows, and there was a horrible wound in its flank, but it lunged at Nick with a savage ferocity. Judy pushed Nick as hard as she could, knocking him to the ground before spinning to face the thing. With a flap of its wings the monster changed course and caught her free arm in its mouth before Judy could bring her sword to bear against its throat.

The sword cut the Ethecal's head off with an amazing cleanness, and while its body slumped twitching to the floor its heavy head was stuck on Judy's arm. She braced the guard of her sabre against its yawning mouth and ripped her arm loose with a cry of pain; it felt as though she had swept it through a pricker bush. The creature's head tumbled to the ground and Judy looked to Nick. "Are you alright?" she asked, her heart pounding in her ears.

Nick stood up, wonder visible in his face even in the dim light of the gas lamp. "You saved me," he said.

"Of course," she said, "I promised I'd make sure you got out."

She was about to continue what she had been about to say when then there was a sudden spasm of pain from her arm. It felt as though it was burning from the inside out and she dropped her sword to clutch at it with her other arm, collapsing to her knees. "Your arm!" Nick said, and his voice was full of horror.

Judy looked down at her injured arm and for an instant didn't recognize it. Two of her fingers were simply gone, and her thumb was hanging on by a thread in a pulped mass of meat. Chunks of flesh had been torn out of her forearm in more than a dozen places, and in a few her skin flapped horribly. There were massive puncture wounds in her arm oozing something that didn't quite look like blood. In the dim light it was nearly black and horribly viscous yet bubbling with foam. Every beat of her heart was suddenly a throbbing burst of pain, and she watched her poisoned blood pulse and seethe with it in perfect harmony. _Poison_ , she thought, and her thought seemed to be coming from miles away, _Or is it venom? I never get those right_.

"Judy!" Nick said, his voice hoarse.

He had closed the distance between them, kneeling on the ground in front of her as he reached out for her. "S'fine, Nick," she said, trying and failing to bat his paws away.

Her voice sounded weak and unsteady to her ears, almost as though she had drank too much. It was a funny thought, and she could feel her lips twitch in a smile. There was no pain anymore; it was almost as though she was drifting off to sleep. "Leave. You gotta get to..." she continued, but she couldn't focus on what was supposed to come next.

Where was he supposed to go? The answer seemed important, but it drifted away from her like a balloon. Nick's eyes were wide, and she could dimly feel his paws against her back. He was warm and the ground was cold. His eyes were bright and beautiful and she felt as though she should have told him that. There was a lot she wished she could have told him. "Get..." she said, and it was barely more than a mumble.

The colors were fading out of the world, Nick's brilliantly red fur going gray as her vision dimmed.

"Get home," she managed at last.

Nick was saying something—shouting something—but she couldn't make it out. Judy closed her eyes and the darkness swallowed her.


	32. Chapter 32

"Lord Bogo?" Cerdo's voice came, somewhat tentatively, "I'm not boring you, am I?"

Bogo blinked. He had decided to start his conversations with the rest of the queen's council with Cerdo. Long years as part of the City Guard had taught him the value of making mammals wait; for some criminals leaving them alone to stew in their own doubts was far more effective than questioning them immediately. Considering that he reserved the strongest suspicions for the other two members of the council, he had thought that it made sense to speak with Cerdo first. Unfortunately, however, nearly the instant that the pig had entered Bogo's shipboard cabin, he had immediately started droning on. Bogo realized he must have stopped giving so much as the impression that he was paying attention to Cerdo's words as he went through his own thoughts.

Bogo quickly favored Cerdo with a very small smile even as he cursed his own wandering focus. There was no telling what a mammal might give away without meaning it, and he realized he couldn't even vaguely describe what Cerdo had been nattering on about. "Not at all, Lord Cerdo," Bogo, "But time is of the utmost importance right now."

Cerdo coughed awkwardly, his ears dropping slightly. "Of course, of course," he said hastily, "I understand, we have far more important matters to discuss than my own personal concerns for the princess's safety. If anything were to happen to her it would be catastrophic for the—but there I go again. Please, Lord Bogo, ask me anything you want."

The pig folded his arms across his ample belly and settled into his chair, which creaked under his considerable girth. Bogo forced aside his own irritation with himself and said the words he had agonized over, taking care to ensure his face was as neutral as possible. "The two attacks on the princess would not have been possible without help from inside the palace."

He watched Cerdo carefully, but the pig didn't appear to think he was being accused of treason; he simply nodded slowly. "And you suspect that Jaime of the Tecuani Barony did not act alone," Cerdo said, his pudgy face creasing in a frown.

"I do," Bogo said, "Which makes for a very limited pool of suspects."

"Myself, Lord Corazón, and Lady Cencerro," Cerdo said, nodding again, "And you, I suppose, although of course you know your own heart."

Bogo relaxed infinitesimally. He had expected that at least one of the members of the council would suggest that he had been involved, and even leaving aside the fact that it was not an unreasonable suspicion—he really did have the most knowledge that would help an assassination attempt succeed—it made what he planned next seem more plausible. "Indeed I do," Bogo said.

Cerdo had worn a thin smile as he suggested the possibility that Bogo was a conspirator, but from the careful way the pig was studying him Bogo suspected that Cerdo really did think it might be possible. "But the queen does not," Bogo continued, "Her trust in me is not absolute. My trust in you and the other members of the council isn't absolute either."

Bogo spoke the words as bluntly as he could, interlacing his thick fingers atop his desk as he stared into Cerdo's eyes. "But I do have the measure of each of you," he said.

Cerdo blinked, and for the first time Bogo would have sworn he looked somewhat nervous. "What would you ask of me?" he asked, spreading his arms beseechingly.

On Corazón, the same gesture would have been impressive and expansive, giving the lion an air of serious consideration. On Cerdo, it merely made him look confused. "To put it bluntly, I can't watch all of you at once. And the queen needs someone to watch me. Once we're on the road to Phoenix, I'll have a rotating series of guards assigned to the princess. At all times, there will be guards from two of the four groups."

"The City Guard, my personal guardsmammals, Corazón's guards, and Cencerro's," Cerdo said.

Bogo nodded. The major problem he had foreseen with any trap he could lay was the possibility that two or more of the council members might be collaborating together. He had initially considered feeding all of them conflicting information, and then seeing who if anyone acted on something only they knew, but his plan would have been obvious if his suspects compared notes. It was another one of the rules of interrogation he had learned; if you capture multiple suspects for a single crime, don't let them speak to each other. Lie to them, make them worry that their partners would betray them, and they tended to seize the opportunity to preemptively betray. Unfortunately, he didn't think it was possible to completely restrict the council members for interacting with each other; no matter how closely they were watched they might use intermediaries or innocuous-sounding code phrases.

The plan he had settled on, therefore, would rely on the fact that they might conspire together. In arranging the guard schedule as he had, each pair would have the opportunity to communicate and plot whatever they wished. What they didn't know, however, was that he would also arrange for there to be apparent gaps where each council member alone would have access to the princess.

It was a breathtakingly risky plan, one of the sort he would never have authorized were the situation not so desperate. It was far from a perfect plan—no matter how carefully things were set up they could always go awry—but in a way having the culprit realize they were being led into a trap was not an entirely bad outcome. If it did nothing more than stop them from making an attempt before the princess and the queen were back in the palace and whatever was happening in Phoenix had been addressed, he would consider it a victory.

"So your idea is for us to watch each other," Cerdo said, "That seems rather wise, all things considered."

That, at least, was classic Cerdo—pompous and a touch obsequious. "I appreciate your support," Bogo said, and it was a testament to long years on the job that it actually sounded sincere rather than sarcastic.

"I'll begin making arrangements once I have the schedule," Cerdo said, and Bogo pushed a piece of paper across his desk as he rose.

Cerdo grabbed it and stood. "I'll begin now," he said, holding the paper up to read it, "Unless there's anything else?"

Bogo looked down at the pig, considering his next action carefully. He had done his best to lay out the bait, and it would shortly be a matter of seeing how well it worked.

"I'm sure you understand the importance of what I've asked," Bogo said simply, "You're smarter than Lord Corazón or Lady Cencerro."

* * *

"Lord Cerdo is not particularly bright," Bogo told Lady Cencerro, "His seat on the queen's council was earned by good luck and his father's hard work. I'm sure you understand why it took some time to make certain details clear to him."

The ewe smiled at Bogo's words; when he had admitted her to his office she had voiced her concern about how long it had taken him and Cerdo to discuss matters. Bogo doubted it could have been more than ten or fifteen minutes even with Cerdo's rambling digression at the beginning of the meeting, but some nobles acted absolutely appalled if the city didn't seem to revolve around them and their schedules. Cencerro wasn't quite as bad as some of the other nobles he had met over the course of his career—he had taken great pleasure after arresting the smug and obnoxious second-born son of a powerful lord for the fifth time and then watching as the son realized his father was finally leaving him to twist in the wind—but she was far from being quite as pleasant as she liked to act. "Just because his father was good at making torcs certainly doesn't make Cerdo worthy of a noble title," Cencerro sniffed, "Not like you. No one can say you didn't earn _your_ title."

Bogo idly wondered how Cencerro would respond if he asked her what she had done to earn the title of nobility that had been passed down to her over generations stretching back to the beginning of the reign of King Oveja I. He dismissed the thought with no small amount of effort; imaging her outrage disguised by a veneer of politeness was rather satisfying. "That's very kind of you to say so," Bogo said instead, "Your own efforts to live up to your title are well known."

"Nobility is an obligation, not just a series of privileges," Cencerro said modestly, humbly averting her eyes to the surface of Bogo's desk.

She was so short that her eyes were more or less level with it anyway, and Bogo nodded. "Something the queen and princess understand quite well," he said.

"We are fortunate that the gods have blessed us with such a queen," Cencerro said, "And with such a worthy heir to carry on her work."

The words sounded sincere enough, but while Lady Alba Cencerro might not have done anything to be born into her title she had done everything to get close to the queen. "Family ties are important," Bogo said agreeably, and his thoughts inevitably drifted to his wife and daughter, "You understand that suspicions on Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro may turn into suspicions against you."

Lady Cencerro laughed nervously. "Are you accusing me of treason, Lord Bogo?" she asked, and her eyes flicked around the room as if searching for an exit that wasn't there.

"Treason, or someone attempting to make you look guilty to hide their own involvement," Bogo said mildly.

He was somewhat interested that Cencerro hadn't brought up the counterpoint herself; he seemed to have gotten her rather flustered.

"If my cousin Diego is involved, that must be it! I'm sure that's why the _real_ mastermind sought him out," Cencerro added quickly, nearly fumbling over her words in her haste to get them out, "If he is involved, of course."

Cencerro certainly appeared nervous, but she was a sheep and a rather small one at that. The queen's poise was, in Bogo's experience, fairly rare for her species, and Bogo suspected that "confidence" and "grace" were two words that rarely came to anyone's mind when they thought of Alba Cencerro. That, or she was an even more skilled political actor than her sometimes partner and sometimes rival Corazón, but he had never quite figured out how the ewe and the lion really felt about each other. Bogo suspected that Corazón would find a good word to say for a monster if it was politically expedient, but superficiality was to be expected for a politician of any sort. Cencerro certainly seemed more open, but Bogo had seen hints of her cunning over the years.

"Of course," Bogo said in his most soothing tone of voice, "You're not just the queen's closest adviser. You're also her friend. I know I can trust you, Lady Cencerro."

* * *

"I don't trust Lady Cencerro," Bogo told Corazón.

The lion sat up straighter in the chair, which groaned considerably under him; although he had a far more athletic build than Lord Cerdo the simple difference in species meant that the lion weighed much more than the pig. Bogo would have to arrange for more suitable furniture the next time the queen's barge went out; just about everything about the cabins had been designed with sheep in mind. He resisted the urge to shake his head to dismiss the pointless thought—where _had_ his focus gone?—and paid careful attention to Corazón's response.

The lion smiled broadly. "She's got the heart of a lioness," he said with a rueful chuckle, "Certainly she's a reminder that smaller mammals are no less capable."

Bogo had to admire his acting skill; Corazón actually managed to sound as though he appreciated one of greatest rivals. Either that, or the lion had taken a bizarre romantic interest in the ewe, which wasn't something he particularly wanted to think about. Besides, it all came back around to what seemed like the only point Corazón cared about, which was his supposed passion for giving all the mammals of Zootopia equal opportunities.

"As you say," Bogo said neutrally; he hadn't forgotten that one of Corazón's prime examples for the supposed value of smaller mammals on the City Guard seemed suspiciously entangled in whatever had happened in Phoenix.

Corazón frowned slightly, but Bogo strongly suspected that the appearance of sadness was entirely manufactured. "I know you and I haven't always seen eye to eye," the lion began.

Bogo resisted the urge to snort; that was about the politest way he had ever heard someone admit to being devoted to tampering with his job and responsibilities. "And I know you must have your suspicions. Certainly you wouldn't be the commanding officer of the City Guard if you weren't paranoid enough!"

Corazón favored Bogo with a winning smile, which quickly and smoothly left the lion's face when Bogo gave him no reaction. "So tell me, Lord Bogo, what must I do to earn your trust?"

"Do you know anything about Judy of Totchli Barony?" Bogo asked suddenly.

He hadn't planned on asking the question, but the opportunity had presented itself and he meant to seize it. If Corazón was perturbed by the sudden topic, he gave no sign of it. "Of course!" Corazón said cheerfully, "The first rabbit to join the City Guard. She'll have been an officer for, what is it, a few weeks now? I do hope she's living up to her performance in the academy."

Corazón seemed like a mammal proud of the accomplishments of a grandchild they didn't see very often, and Bogo pressed further. "Did you ever meet her?" he asked.

"I'm afraid not," Corazón said, and that too-perfect frown was back on his face that made it seem like a tragedy, "I did want to attend her graduation and give her my congratulations, but I was too busy to make it."

Bogo frowned himself, and Corazón asked, "Are you supposing she was involved in these attempts on the princess's life?"

"I'm considering all the possibilities," Bogo said, and then he explained the plan for guard duty.

* * *

Their arrival at the end of the aqueduct was just as anticlimactic as Bogo had hoped. It had occurred to him, more than once during the trip, that if a would-be assassin destroyed part of the aqueduct, Zootopia would lose its queen, princess, the entire queen's council, and a significant chunk of the City Guard as they plunged to their deaths against the hard ground hundreds of feet below. Keeping all of his top suspects on one ship had been something of a proof against that, since he had figured that none of the members of the queen's council would want the princess dead so badly that they'd give up their life for it. Whether he was right that one of them had chosen not to act on the water portion of their trip or not, they had safely made it to Tzitz Quit, the City Guard outpost that guarded the waterfall the aqueduct terminated in.

On his previous trips to Tzitz Quit, Bogo had always been impressed by the scale of it. It stood atop a massive pillar nearly a quarter-mile in diameter of the same white stone that the Middle Wall was made of, but where that wall was undecorated except at the War Gate, the pillar was elaborately carved and painted. Circling the massive column in a slowly rising spiral were bas-relief images of previous heads of the City Guard, going all the way back to the days of the ancient emperors. Unlike the royal palace, Tzitz Quit had not been razed and rebuilt, and the watchful eyes of long-dead jaguars stared out from the stone. Going higher up the column, the point where King Oveja I had started his dynasty was obvious; not only did the mammals depicted stop being jaguars, but the art style noticeably changed. The pillar was tall enough that even once Bogo died and had his depiction added as was tradition there would be ample room for the mammals who came after him; nearly half the pillar was still unblemished white.

Atop the pillar was a massive stepped pyramid that straddled the aqueduct, arching so far above the surface of the water that even the tallest ships wouldn't come close to scraping. Where the aqueduct actually ended, an enormous stone grate kept ships from going over the waterfall, the spray of water making incredible rainbows. A complicated series of locks and channels could be used to get ships to the aqueduct that ran the opposite direction so that they could reach the city-state's center without having to fight the current, but Bogo barely paid them a glance. His only concern, which he saw to his satisfaction had been addressed, was that there wasn't so much as a civilian dingy in the vicinity of Tzitz Quit. Although the outpost was normally teeming with dock-side trade and ships fighting to berth to unload and sell their wares, it had been completely cleared out for royal use. Bogo was sure there had been quite a bit of muttered complaining about that, considering how much the merchants were likely losing from the missed opportunities, but it was a negligible price to pay for safety.

When the queen's barge docked, the commanding officer of Tzitz Quit was already waiting. Although protocol typically demanded an elaborate reception for royalty when they traveled, Bogo had dispensed with all of that, and he asked the grizzled old sea otter the only question that mattered. "Any word from Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro?"

"He beat you here by an hour or so," the otter said, nodding, "Got him and the, uh, survivors waiting for you."

The captain had a look of curiosity in his eyes, and his slight hesitation over the word "survivors" told Bogo that he likely knew at least something about what Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro claimed had happened. "Bring me to him," Bogo said, "And I want to hear everything you know about what's going on in Phoenix on the way."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

As is my wont, I skipped the author's notes for the last chapter so as to keep the dramatic impact of the cliffhanger it ended on. Before getting to the notes for this chapter, I do have some comments about chapter 31.

The Ehecatls are named after one of Quetzalcoatl's aliases. Ehecatl was a god of the wind and is generally considered to be an aspect of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent. Way back in chapter 13, when Nick was describing some of the things that could be found under Phoenix, he did in fact mention "feathered snakes with wings," and chapter 31 finally showed them off. My goal was to make them extremely creepy, and I figured that combining snakes with birds was a good fit that also fit the mythology. Their ability to speak is something that many birds have; although parrots are probably the most well-known there are many species capable of mimicking human voices as well as an enormous variety of other sounds, from cell phone ring tones and car alarms to the click of a camera shutter.

Although in Judy's confused mental state she notes that she never remembers whether a substance is venom or poison, there is a difference. The difference is that venom is an animal secretion that is injected or delivered through a bite or a sting, while a poison is something that is eaten. A decent way of remembering the difference is this: "If you bite it and you die, it's poison. If it bites you and you die, it's venom." As the chapter ends, Judy is therefore affected by venom delivered by the monster's teeth rather than a poison.

Moving onto this chapter, I'll admit that I enjoyed the dramatic irony of Bogo telling each member of the queen's council something and then jump cutting to him saying the opposite to a different member. I've always figured that Bogo simply doesn't like playing politics but he's actually pretty good at it.

The initial plan that Bogo briefly describes, of telling each member of the council something different and seeing who acts on their unique information, is a real tactic known as a canary trap or a barium meal trap. A common example is for sensitive documents to have slightly different versions (such as through slightly wording or in hidden metadata), so that if someone leaks it the leak can be traced back to the original person the document was given to. The downside of this plan, which Bogo notes, is that if multiple people compare their information with each other, they can realize that a trap has been set. Such a thing happened in the real world at Tesla; Elon Musk provided slightly different versions of an email to various people in an attempt to find the employee leaking information. However, when one employee forwarded it on to others, all of those recipients could then compare that version to their own and see the trap.

The value that Bogo sees in suspects not being able to communicate with each other is the basis for the well-known prisoner's dilemma. In the prisoner's dilemma, the key takeaway is that in the absence of the ability to communicate with your co-conspirators, the best choice you can make for yourself is to betray them.

Bogo wondering at how Cencerro would react to being asked to justify her own title of nobility also shows something of a blind spot in his thinking; it doesn't seem to occur to him that the same question could be asked of the princess or the queen, both of whom were born to their position.

Cencerro's comments about nobility consisting of responsibilities as well as privileges is the key of the concept of _noblesse oblige_ , or "nobility obliges," which suggests this concept. Of course, over the course of history many nobles have used it as a self-serving justification for their own privileges.

"Tzitz Quit" is named somewhat ironically; in the Nahuatl language it means "very small." It's really only small in comparison to the palace, since as described it's absolutely massive.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you think. Next week, we'll be getting back to Judy, and I hope you'll enjoy what's coming!


	33. Chapter 33

Pain pulled Judy back to a fuzzy awareness. She was on her back, the world dreamily spinning around her as if in sheer defiance of the abominable pain creeping up her arm. Nick's face, tight with worry, swam in and out of focus above her, but he wasn't looking into her eyes. Judy lolled her head to the side in the direction he was looking and saw that he was cinching his belt around her arm. The flesh beneath the belt was swelling like a balloon, and despite a fresh searing wave of agony the association made her smile.

The taste of strawberries on Totchli Barony Fair Day was so real on her tongue it was almost as though she was there, sticky strawberry juice on her muzzle and a balloon in one paw. She remembered being so small that it felt as though that balloon could have carried her away, and remembering how she had wished that it would. Judy could feel herself floating, and suddenly she was drifting as she rose above the Middle Wall, leaving the celebrations and all the fairgoers far below as the serenity of the clouds above beckoned her toward their embrace. Their cold and foggy hug pulled gently at her and—

The pain returned so explosively that Judy could not help but scream, a high keening wail that sounded alien to her own ears. It was agony, it was unbearable, it was as though Nick was ripping her arm off in degrees while stabbing it with a thousand knives. She fell back to herself, the pleasant spring air of Fair Day dissolving into the dim ruins of Quimichpatlan Barony. Nick was pulling his improvised tourniquet cruelly tight, and something red-black and foul oozed sluggishly out of her many wounds as it pressed harder and harder into her skin. "Stay with me," Nick was saying, his voice pleading, "Come on, Judy, stay with me."

"Hurts," she murmured, her throat raw from screaming, "Tired."

"I know. I know," Nick said, "But I _need_ you. Are any of your quauhxicallis good for healing?"

Considering the question stretched off into infinity, offering some little refuge from the brutal pain as her mind slowly worked. Judy was only an ensign, and the uses of each vial on her belt ran through her mind. Bat, which was good for about twenty minutes of something like a sickening mixture of sight and sound to navigate in total darkness. Might have been useful fighting Ehecatls, if only she had had the time to drink the vial and it wasn't so disorienting to use. Cheetah, which would boost her top running speed for four or five minutes. Elephant, which would make her so strong she had to move by slowly shuffling her feet or she'd crack her head against ceilings just trying to walk. There had been one time, in the academy... Judy could feel her thoughts running away from her but was helpless to stop them. None of her quauhxicallis were any good for healing. But she had missed her chance, hadn't she?

She was back in the Phoenix City Guard barracks, her footsteps echoing ominously as she and Nick went through the silent building. There would have been more powerful quauhxicallis there, if only they had looked. She could _see_ them, rows and rows of little vials, all carefully labeled and locked away. Why hadn't they taken any? It would have been the work of minutes to find the vault and have Nick force it open with alchemy. But now she'd never get the chance to make up for any of her mistakes. She was dying.

The realization hit her suddenly and helpless tears came to her eyes. Without a quauhxicalli and with alchemy still being blocked by the hateful monster levels below, Nick wouldn't be able to do anything for her. It seemed horribly cruel that the gods would make him watch her die and leave him alone deep underground. Why couldn't the Ehecatl have just stayed down? The depressingly orderly barracks were gone, and she was standing among the pile of monster corpses with Nick in front of her. "I want to tell you something," she said.

His face lit up with hope, and it made him handsome beyond words. "Is that so?" he asked, and the smile teasing at his lips was beautiful, completely devoid of the slightest bit of cynicism. Nick entwined his fingers into hers, pulling her close against her. Judy could feel his fur and the fine silk of his clothes brushing against her, and his paw was warm as he brought her chin gently up. The entire world receded until it was just him, everything else forgotten. "And what's that, Judy?"

The way he said her name, her actual name, made her melt. "I—"

"Judy! Will any of your quauhxicallis help?" Nick interrupted.

 _Oh,_ Judy thought vaguely, _That hadn't been real either._ The pain returned in waves that made her tremble with the enormity of it. It was all-consuming, completely blocking out her ability to think. In the dim light of the lantern Nick's face grayed as the colors seemed to run out of the world, and then filled back in to its normal red-orange.

"No," Judy croaked.

The look of despair on Nick's face just about broke her heart. She wished she could say more, but her throat was stuck and her brain couldn't put the right words in the right order. "Come on, then, up you go," Nick said, and he heaved her off the floor and across his shoulders.

Judy's ruined left paw brushed against his side and the entire world went gray again, bursting with pinpoints of vividly coruscating color. "—fine," Nick was saying, however he had started his sentence lost to the pain, "You're doing fine."

He was panting with exertion as he staggered across the cracked floor of the barony, still lit only by the dim glow of his gas lantern. "Tired," Judy said again, and she was.

She wanted to stay awake; she really did. But anything would have been better than reality. Why couldn't she have been with Nick again, standing in triumph over the monstrous Ehecatls? Why couldn't—"You can't fall asleep," Nick interrupted sharply, "I need you awake. Come on, Judy, you're too stubborn to give up now."

"I'll try," she managed, and the effort it took was exhausting.

She _did_ want to fight on. There was too much left to do; she had to make the City Guard understand Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro's treachery. They needed to be warned about the army amassing under the banner of the Betrayer. And _she_ needed to tell Nick—"Listen," Nick said, "I'll tell you a story. But you need to pay attention, understand?"

Judy nodded weakly.

"Once upon a time," Nick began, "There was a fox. A very young one, smaller than you are."

He paused a moment, and something like curiosity tickled at Judy's brain. "Cuter, I have to say," Nick continued, "Lighter, too."

Some of the tension had drained out of his voice, and it made Judy glad. "I'll be honest, I was an adorable kit. Could you imagine me at age seven?"

For a long moment, with poison—or was it venom?—coursing through her veins and the increasingly distant throbbing in her arm Judy couldn't. And then suddenly it was as though Nick had lost more than two decades. He was adorable, his green eyes sparkling and full of honest cheer, his expression more mischievous than cynical. His ears seemed longer on his smaller head, his muzzle shorter, and Judy imagined him wearing the simple smock kits back in the Totchli Barony wore.

"I can," Judy murmured, her head bouncing against Nick's shoulders with every step he took.

"Good, that's good," Nick replied.

He was still panting with the exertion of carrying her, but something like hope had come back into his voice. The image of a younger Nick was fading, the reality of the pain setting back in, and he continued. "When I was seven, I had everything I could ever want. My parents..."

Nick's voice caught in his throat. Or maybe he was just tired of carrying her. "They loved me very much. They weren't rich, but they had their own shop in the Inner Baronies. Can you guess what kind of shop?"

Judy couldn't, but for his sake she tried. "Bakery?" she asked, and Nick chuckled.

"No, they were both terrible cooks."

"Quauh... Qua... Quauhx..." Judy began, but she couldn't help but fumble over the word; it was far too difficult to say.

"They weren't blood magicians," Nick said, "Not alchemists either, of course."

"They made clothes," Nick continued, "Good ones, the kind that merchants and minor nobles would buy. My parents always wanted me to take it over someday."

Judy's parents had wanted her to follow their footsteps, too. She supposed that was something she and Nick had in common, and she wondered what _his_ parents thought of his career. "Anyway," Nick continued, "My father got sick. My mother and I would have done anything for him. You understand that, don't you?"

Yes, of course she did. Judy nodded again, her head brushing against Nick's shoulders. She knew what it was like to have someone she would do anything for. "We started with blood magicians, but none of them could do much more than write expensive bills."

There was a casualness to how he spoke that Judy didn't believe. "So then we went to an alchemist. The alchemist said he could cure my father, so how couldn't we try? It was going to be expensive, though. Selling the shop and all the stock would barely be enough to cover treatment with a philosopher's stone the size of a grain of sand."

The words were coming out of Nick faster and faster, and Judy found that she couldn't focus on anything but his words. The throbbing pain and spreading numbness were forgotten as he poured himself out to her. "He didn't want us to do it. Begged us not to. He didn't... He didn't want to sell my future for his," Nick said, and Judy could feel his shrug gently lifting her body.

"That's being a parent, though, isn't it?" Nick asked, "A good one, anyway."

Judy thought of her own parents. They had never been happy with her decision to join the City Guard, but they hadn't stopped her either. Would either of them made the same demand if they had been so sick? She thought they would. She had been blessed with wonderful parents, and she couldn't help but wonder if she had done enough to show them that.

"I convinced him, though. Even at seven, I had a way with words," Nick said, "I told him we could build it all back up again as a family, that he was more important than the shop."

Judy could see it in her mind's eye. Nick's mother and father were only vaguely fox-shaped phantoms, their features indistinct and shifting, but she could picture Nick. Small and earnest and unashamed about telling his father how much he loved him. She wished she could have seen that Nick for herself.

"The philosopher's stone didn't work," Nick said.

His voice was bluntly steady, but Judy thought there was a world of emotion hidden inside the words. She saw a sobbing fox kit and wished she could comfort him. Judy hugged the little fox tight, feeling his body trembling against her as he wailed. But that never could have happened. Nick was older than she was, and with the realization the kit vanished.

Reality washed over her like a cold wind, the illusion of giving comfort vanishing in an instant and returning her to the misery of her ruined arm and her own impending death.

"No one would lend my mother the money to buy back the shop, so she got the best job she could," Nick continued, "I got a job too."

"Alchemist?" Judy managed to say.

It somehow made perfect sense to her, picturing a young Nick dressed as he was in the present, the very building blocks of nature bowing to his whims. How could they not? It seemed as though there ought to be a connection between the loss of his father and his mastery of magic, as though his grief had somehow transmuted itself into the skill he needed. "You're really out of it," Nick said.

She felt as though his words should have been teasing, but they weren't. There was worry there, but that was alright. He just wasn't seeing the same connections that she was as her body failed her. "But I guess you're half-right. The Alchemist Guild wouldn't take on a fox as an apprentice—not that my mother could have afforded the fee anyway—but one of the alchemists did hire me to clean her lab. I think she—well, that's not important. It was beneath her apprentices to do anything so menial as sweep floors. That was a job for a fox."

Judy had never seen the inside of an alchemist's laboratory before, but she was standing in what could only be such a lab. It was a cavernous space, all filled up with workbenches covered in the same sorts of strange gadgets she had seen in Phoenix. Crumbling books and gleaming metal scrolls lined sagging shelves along the walls, complicated diagrams of straight lines and smooth curves filling up the few gaps not taken by narrow windows. The apprentices were the same mammals she herself had gone to the academy with. The cruelest ones, if she was being honest with herself, the ones who had taken delight every time she struggled and failed. The apprentices were dressed exactly like Master Rogelio's apprentice, and by comparison Nick looked particularly shabby. His simple smock was plain and unadorned, and the broom he used was taller than he was. But he was sweeping as best he could anyway, and if some sorrow had crept into his features there was still a sense of childishness to them. "You missed a spot," one of the apprentices, a tall and haughty deer, jeered.

The young Nick apologized profusely, but when he went to sweep the indicated spot the deer tripped him, exactly the way that deer had once tripped Judy. "Watch where you're going!" the deer said, and in Judy's mind everything seemed doubled, the memory of her own experience and her imagining of Nick's blending together until she couldn't tell them apart.

She was watching Nick, far away from her dying body, and that was enough. "They didn't think I knew how to read," Nick—the young Nick—explained, turning to look solemnly up at Judy, "It made them careless."

The complicated alchemical diagrams covering the walls exploded in complexity, shifting lines of text swirling around incomprehensibly, and the apprentice alchemists scribbled furiously away in their notebooks as they followed along. Nick wasn't writing anything down, but there was a thoughtfulness in how he studied those impossible notes that all the apprentices lacked. They were merely trying to keep up with the flow of information, frantically writing everything down. Nick was understanding it.

She could see him surreptitiously glancing up between sweeps of his broom, occasionally muttering wordlessly to himself. The lab shifted around her, the light streaming in through the windows fading away to nothing. In the center of the room, where there was a large flat and smooth piece of slate on a pedestal, Nick stood atop a chair drawing with a piece of chalk. His tongue stuck out one side of his mouth in grim concentration, his eyes narrowed in focus, and Judy saw that he had made a somewhat lopsided representation of what she recognized as an alchemical array.

The young fox's ears perked up and he turned as though he had heard her coming. "I'm going to learn how to make philosopher's stones myself," Nick told her, his eyes bright and full of determination, "So I can help mammals."

"Why didn't you say so?" a plain-looking sow asked.

The pig had suddenly appeared, completely ignoring Judy's presence. "Tell you what, Nicholas," the pig said, "If you prove that a fox can do any bit of alchemy, I'll show you how to make a philosopher's stone myself."

There was a cruel glint to the pig's eyes that Nick didn't seem to notice. "I can do alchemy!" he said proudly, "Watch, I can—"

"Why don't you show me tomorrow?" the sow interrupted, "I'll bring the rest of the apprentices. It's a difficult lesson we'll have to teach you. I'm going to need some help."

"Really?" Nick asked, "Do you promise?"

The pig smiled. "Absolutely."

"She was lying," Judy said.

The words seemed to come from far away, and when Nick replied his mouth didn't move at first. "She was," the young fox said, "It's a secret that only the masters of the Alchemist Guild know. The next day, when the other apprentices were around..."

A semi-circle of mammals had formed around Nick and the stone slab at the center of the room. With extraordinary care, he lit a candle and set it at one of the corners, populating two of the others with a pawful of dirt and a cup of water. He had drawn out a rather simple-looking alchemical array on the slap, at the center of which he placed a lump of charcoal.

"Come on, Nicholas, prove it," the pig said.

"Yeah, prove it and we'll teach you how to make a philosopher's stone!" another voice came from the crowd of apprentices.

They seemed to multiply around him, an endless series of voices calling for him to prove himself, but Nick planted his palms firmly against the slab without the slightest bit of hesitation and closed his eyes. The transmutation of the charcoal into diamond was more beautiful than any bit of alchemy Judy had ever seen before; it seemed to strobe with colors as what it was made of shifted.

"I know, I know, it's not a difficult transmutation," Nick said modestly, turning to face his audience, "But it's proof I can do it, right?"

The apprentices were watching him slack-jawed for a moment. And then the pig punched him in the face.

She was several times his size and the little fox kit flew to the floor, crying in pain. "You think you can _steal_ the secrets of alchemy?" she asked, "You're a thief just like every other fox."

Nick was wincing as he tried sitting up, but the deer from before planted a hoof in the middle of his chest and pushed him down. "You _do_ need a lesson, thief."

"Nick—" Judy began, watching the tears and hurt welling up in the fox's eyes as she tried to rush to him.

"I guess you don't need to hear all of it," Nick said, "Just stay focused on my voice, alright?"

The laboratory and other mammals faded until it was just her and Nick. He was an adult again, and for some reason he was carrying her across his shoulders in a dimly lit cavern. Judy felt as though she should know why he was doing something like that, but the answer refused to come. "After that, I knew that the Alchemist Guild wouldn't be any help. I only knew a tiny bit of alchemy, but I did have something most of those apprentices didn't. Do you know what that was?"

Judy considered the question as she bounced up and down on Nick's shoulders. She was utterly stumped, and Nick kept speaking. "I knew how to figure things out," he said, "Books on alchemy are rare and expensive, but there are ways to get them, and I knew I could work out what I couldn't learn from a book."

A bright light suddenly flared into existence, and Judy instinctively tried raising her arm to shield her eyes. When a sudden stab of pain exploded in her shoulder instead, she remembered what had happened to her arm. "Praise the gods, the Nopalayotl's gone," Nick said, and he carefully lowered her to the floor.

His lantern was glowing with the brilliant light of an alchemical torch again, and by its harsh light she saw him rummaging through his pack until he pulled out a number of what looked like flat stones that glowed pink with their own inner light. They were pretty, opalescent and shimmering in a way that made Judy think of fog hanging close to the surface of water. Nick delicately lifted Judy's left arm, which had swollen to nearly twice its normal size, and shoved a stone into one of her wounds.

The pain made everything she had felt leading up to that point feel mild by comparison. It burned as though it had been a white-hot charcoal, and Judy screamed until she lost all her sense of herself. When she could think again, Nick was carefully wrapping her arm in clean white bandages. The spots where he had inserted the stones glowed dimly through her flesh and the bandages, the pink hue of the stones becoming almost reddish. "They aren't complete philosopher's stones, but they're not incomplete either," Nick said, "I think I'm close to figuring out how to make a complete one."

The pain slowly faded until it was a dull roar, and Judy smiled. "You're a good mammal, Nick," she said.

Every word cost her a tremendous effort, and her arm itched as well as burned, but she somehow felt marginally better. "I'm not," Nick said, sighing.

He rummaged through his pack again, coming up with a package of chalk, a straightedge, and a length of string. "You wanted to help," Judy protested, but Nick just shook his head.

"How do you think I got those books on alchemy?" he asked, "No one was going to just _give_ them to me. There was a mammal who wanted me to make him fake torcs, ones that would stand up to examination by the City Guard."

It took Judy's sluggish mind a moment to grasp the implications. Torcs uniquely identified a mammal; a mammal could be positively identified by theirs even if the rest of their body had been damaged beyond recognition. A perfect fake could let a mammal take on a new identity, and a mammal could only remove their own original torc outside of the Middle Wall. "Fermina," Judy managed to say as the pieces all fell into place.

"Yes," Nick said, keeping his eyes on the complicated array he was drawing on the floor, "I lied to you about her. She really is Alfonso's daughter, and I made her a new torc so she could start a new life."

He looked up at her, and his expression was full of sorrow. "It wasn't the first one I made for Big over the years, but it was the last. She didn't have anything to do with her father's crimes, and..." he said, trailing off.

"I'm not proud of everything I've done," Nick continued at last, "None of it had anything to do with Phoenix or the princess, but if you want to arrest me let's wait until we're through this mess."

Judy couldn't help but stare at Nick in the brilliant glow of the alchemical torch. Maybe she should have felt betrayed; he had lied to her face, tricked her into thinking she had jumped to an unfounded conclusion when it had been the truth. But thinking about it was so very hard, and she wanted to enjoy whatever time was left to her. "S'fine," she mumbled, "We'll talk later."

Nick looked up from his work, carefully rising to avoid his delicate drawing and walking over to where she lay. He gently felt at her left arm and his shoulder, and a frown touched his face. "Those incomplete stones aren't enough," Nick said even as he threw himself to the ground to continue scrawling lines and curves across the floor, "If I don't try something else, you're going to die."

Judy wasn't sure how much time passed before Nick looked up at her again, a nub of chalk clenched in his paw. Chalk dust had spread across the front of his shirt and there was a white shock of it in the fur on top of his head where he must have run his paw through it. "This is probably going to hurt a lot," Nick said.

It did.


	34. Chapter 34

Captain Del Mar was the sort of officer Bogo had loathed early in his career. The otter was unambitious, had every law and regulation memorized, and seemingly couldn't make a decision without discussing it first. Age and experience, however, had taught Bogo that while Del Mar would never be his first choice for a partner while walking a beat the otter would be his top pick for an administrative job.

His lack of ambition meant he was satisfied staying at the same posting for years, providing stability and a deep understanding of the role only strengthened by his incredible knowledge and consistent application of the rules. His need for discussion meant his own subordinates felt valued, the civilians felt respected, and the final decision ended up being well thought-out.

Frankly, If Bogo could go back in time he would hit his younger self upside the head for being an impatient and hot-tempered waste of a uniform, but he doubted it would have accomplished much. The arrogance of youth seemed near-universal, and Bogo winced at some of the things he had done. Del Mar might have never taken down a gang, but Bogo doubted he had ever gotten into a fistfight with a fellow officer.

Still, his grudging respect for the otter didn't mean that he had to like him, and as Del Mar led Bogo through the maze of corridors that made up the interior of Tzitz Quit he was glad he didn't have a painful reminder of why. Normally Del Mar was perhaps the most aggressively friendly mammal Bogo had ever met short of Corazón, his interest in others so strong that it seemed as though it had to be fake. Del Mar had a real talent for sounding as if he was genuinely interested in the boring stories and terrible jokes of other mammals, and on every other visit Bogo had made to Tzitz Quit the otter had been rather tiring to deal with for any length of time. Now, however, Del Mar was deadly serious and almost bluntly to the point.

When Bogo had asked Del Mar about what had happened in Phoenix, it had taken the captain only a moment to gather his thoughts before launching into his report without breaking his stride. "Tzitz Quit is the next best thing to having mammals on the ground in the wastelands," Del Mar began, "We have the elevation to keep an eye on the road between the War Gate and Phoenix—and the mammals and equipment to do it day or night."

Bogo nodded, gesturing for Del Mar to go on without further explanation. Bogo knew that among Tzitz Quit's many other purposes—routing water traffic, serving as a marketplace, acting as a City Guard armory and barracks—the primary reason it had been built was as a guard tower. The outpost rose even higher than any point on the nearby War Gate, which Tzitz Quit long predated. When the tower had been built, it had been as one of twelve towers evenly spaced around the Middle Wall. As originally built, the Middle Wall only had three gates in it, equally spaced, and Tzitz Quit had not stood near one of those gates. It had, in fact, been of little importance until King Oveja I—at that time merely General Oveja—had used his alchemists to blow a hole in the Outer Wall and made their way to the Middle Wall, where they again made their own entrance. When the War Gate had been built in the aftermath, Tzitz Quit had eventually gone from one of the least important outposts to the most important, and great care had been taken over the centuries to ensure it lived up to its purpose.

As Bogo knew, one of the ways in which Tzitz Quit had retained relevance as a watch tower was by always using the most advanced possible means of monitoring. The top of the tower had the finest telescopes with the most perfect lenses alchemists could make, and the mammals keeping watch included those with naturally good day and night vision as well as the quauhxicallis needed for even better vision. Del Mar's claim was not, in Bogo's experience, an idle boast; Bogo had fought endless rounds of committee meetings to keep Tzitz Quit's monitoring budget. The ruinous expense of maintaining guard outposts in the wastelands of the Outer Baronies had made those costs at least marginally appealing to the more tight-fisted mammals weighing in on budgets. For a few months, at least, before the arguments started again.

Bogo forced his attention back to Del Mar; the operating budget of the City Guard should have been the furthest thing from his mind.

"There hasn't been much in the way of unusual traffic the past few days," Del Mar said; mercifully Bogo didn't seem to have missed anything while his thoughts briefly wandered, "The usual mix of merchant caravans heading each way. There _was_ a report of a lone alchemist being escorted by a guardsmammal, but Nicholas of the Middle Baronies makes the trip back and forth quite regularly. I've pulled the logs from the War Gate of comings and goings for you, should you wish to inspect them."

Bogo nodded, but he couldn't help but be interested by the way in which Del Mar had phrased his response. "You know this Nicholas?" he asked, and Del Mar nodded in turn.

The otter paused a moment to scratch at the fur atop his head, which was shot through with quite a bit of white, before answering. "Oh yes," he said, "He's something of a fixture on the route. A bit peculiar, considering he's a predator and all, but I've seen for myself that he's either an alchemist or the greatest fraud in all of Zootopia."

"What do you think of him? Could he be involved?"

Del Mar hesitated a moment again before answering, and he scratched at his own head so vigorously that stray clumps of fur stood up awkwardly. "He _is_ the friendly sort," the otter said slowly, "I like to think I have a bit of a skill at connecting with mammals. Get them to open up about themselves, if you know what I mean. And Nicholas seems to have plenty of funny stories, but I have no idea how he turned out to be an alchemist. It's a bit odd, especially if you know other alchemists. You can't get them to shut up about their work and what they've done!"

He flashed a commiserating smile, and Bogo supposed that Del Mar's work probably brought him into closer contact with more members of the Alchemist Guild than his own did; that was certainly something he didn't envy. "They certainly love talking about themselves," Bogo agreed, hoping Del Mar would continue.

A frown suddenly flashed across Del Mar's face. "But if he was plotting something, he's been up to it for _years_ ," the otter said, "If he's fooled me, he's fooled dozens of other mammals."

It was the weak point of any conspiracy; hiding something massive was more difficult than most mammals thought. All it took was for someone, just a single mammal, to notice something off and the most elaborate of schemes could crumble. "Please continue," Bogo said.

Del Mar took a moment to pick up the thread of his story again. "Since we lost communication with Phoenix, it's looked, well, abandoned. There are still lights, but none that move or change," he said, "And it almost looks as though there's an army in front of it."

Even a cheap alchemical torch would provide light for decades, so it wasn't surprising that some lights would be unchanged. An army, though, was an entirely different matter. "An army?" Bogo asked sharply.

He had secretly hoped that Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro had been lying in his message, but he couldn't think of a way for the sheep to have assembled an entire army in Phoenix without anyone noticing. Unless, of course, Del Mar was also in on it. "An army," Del Mar said with a nod; if he could tell what Bogo was thinking he certainly didn't show it.

"A big one, too, at least a few thousand mammals. Can't tell you much more than that, what with how far away Phoenix is," Del Mar continued, and Bogo was studying the otter carefully.

He didn't look as though he was lying; he looked worried, in fact. His face was nearly white with age, rugged and careworn beneath his fur, and his concern was obvious. "What's Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro told you?" Bogo asked.

"Not much," Del Mar replied ruefully, "Wouldn't say hardly anything. Doesn't trust me, I think. He just called the mammals he was with 'survivors' and barricaded himself in a room."

"I see," Bogo replied, his voice as neutral as he could make it.

Was Cencerro plotting a scheme or a victim of it? Was Del Mar involved or not? It could have all been an elaborate ruse to throw him on the wrong scent, or everything could be precisely as it appeared. Perhaps Cencerro was just the commander of the military force of a settlement unfortunate enough to be attacked by barbarians. Perhaps Del Mar was just the loyal commander of a watchtower. But then again, perhaps not.

"It looks bad," Del Mar said, so quietly that Bogo almost didn't notice, and then the otter added a bit louder, "If we can't trust each other, we're not really an army anymore, are we?"

Was Del Mar simply voicing his very reasonable concern, or was he probing Bogo for weakness? If it was the latter, Bogo had to admit that he had rarely felt weaker. His neat and orderly world had all been upended, and the pieces seemed to be refusing to go back where they had been. He wondered if the mammals who had fought for the emperor when King Oveja I had established his lineage had felt the same. Being blindsided by something they could have never seen coming, how had they reacted? They had lost, of course, and some part of Bogo couldn't help but wonder if he would too.

But it wouldn't do to tell a subordinate officer his fears, even if he hadn't held vague suspicions about that officer's loyalty. Instead, Bogo simply said, "We're an army until the queen says we're not."

Del Mar nodded vigorously, and Bogo couldn't tell if the look of relief on his face was genuine or simply for his own benefit. They walked in silence the rest of the way to the room that Cencerro had claimed for himself; if there was one thing Tzitz Quit was absolutely not lacking it was space. The hallways were all incredibly wide and tall, stone floors worn almost as smooth as glass from millennia of use, and Bogo wouldn't have been surprised to learn that every room in the watchtower had been repurposed dozens of times each over the ages. The signs of construction and modification were everywhere, from spots in the walls where the ghostly outlines of doors that no longer existed stood to the ever-so-slightly mismatched alchemical torches set into the ceiling. When they did finally stop, it was in front of an unremarkable wooden door, splintering slightly at the bottom; the way Tzitz Quit was laid out it could have just as easily been a broom closet as a ballroom. None of the interior rooms had windows to let in natural lighting, and getting lost seemed more inevitable than possible. "Just through here, sir," Del Mar said, gesturing at the door.

"Thank you, Captain," Bogo replied.

If the otter's eyes hadn't been on him, Bogo might have taken a deep breath to steady himself. He wasn't worried, precisely, or even on the edge of panic. Not that panic was a feeling he was used to; with the exception of the time the midwife had burst into his office, stumbling over her words, while Maria was pregnant he wasn't sure he could name the last time he had felt it. He was concerned, though, and not just about what Diego Cencerro would say. Were his own abilities, with his increasingly wandering attention, up to the task before him?

Bogo repressed a shrug as he pulled the door open. So long as he had the queen's trust, he would do the best he could for as long as he could until he was either dead or dismissed. With that grim thought, he stepped into the room.

* * *

The total population of Phoenix was—or rather, had been—about seven thousand mammals according to the last census that Bogo had seen. Seven thousand mammals, ranging in size from shrews and voles to elephants and giraffes, with a diversity of species that rivaled the Inner and Middle Baronies. Seven thousand mammals, each with their own hopes and dreams and fears.

There were fifteen mammals in the room.

They didn't even fill one corner, all of them huddled together silent and wide-eyed as though nothing else existed. All of them, at least, except for Diego Cencerro. While Bogo had only met the sheep a few times, he had made a lasting impression. Part of it was because one of the simple but useful tricks he had learned on the way from ensign to captain general was the value in remembering names and faces. Most of it, though, was because the sheep was always so fastidious about his appearance. Bogo had seen illustrations in City Guard instructional booklets that looked less perfectly put together than the lieutenant colonel usually did.

The sheep standing before him was a mess. His armor was dinged and scraped, his quilted red tunic underneath it torn in places and covered with travel dust. The feathers on his bracelet were broken and filthy, drooping sadly. Cencerro seemed to have lost a chunk of one ear, a filthy blood-soaked bandage doing little to hide the missing wedge, and dried blood was caked into the closely-shaved wool of his neck. Cencerro's eyes were dull and haunted-looking, the flesh underneath them puffy and black. Even his normally pinkish skin, although still visible under his wool, looked gray.

It seemed to take Cencerro visible effort to pull himself up to attention as Bogo entered; even the ram's normally perfect posture wasn't quite up to its usual standard. "I have a report for you, Captain General," Cencerro said, and his voice was raspy and cracked, "There are chairs, if you'd like to sit."

The sheep gestured at a nearby chair; the room he had taken over was evidently a meeting room of some sort—intended for the guilds either too poor or too frugal to build their own hall, most likely—and it was dominated by a massive circular table and an array of chairs in all different sizes to let mammals sit more or less at eye level with each other no matter their species. None of the fourteen survivors Cencerro had brought with him were sitting at the table; all of them, including three members of the Phoenix City Guard who looked even more battered than the ram, were simply sitting on the floor in one corner.

Bogo took the offered seat, but Cencerro remained standing, even though he looked as though anything might make him keel over. Some of Cencerro's slavish devotion to regulation and protocol had remained, then. "Be seated," Bogo ordered, and Cencerro all but collapsed into a chair.

"Your report please," Bogo said nearly the instant the sheep sat; he wasn't entirely unsympathetic to Cencerro's apparent exhaustion, but he was in no mood to wait.

Cencerro licked at his lips, and then his face went oddly still. He still looked tired beyond all imagining, but more like a sculpture than an actual mammal, he was so motionless. At last, he began speaking, his voice nearly perfectly flat and expressionless. "It all began when Ensign Judy of the Totchli Barony escorted the alchemist fox to Phoenix," he said, each word coming out slowly.

"Ensign Totchli then joined the Phoenix City Guard's search for the blood magician we had received word of," Cencerro continued, "I had every qualified mammal scouring the city for the wolf and the tigress. The fox alchemist—Nicholas of the Middle Baronies, that is—had been escorted to Phoenix to put in a bid on a public project. Water purification."

Cencerro's words were clipped and still emotionless, but the sheep had never been particularly expressive. "Finding the blood magicians was our top priority, but I still had a small force responsible for responding to normal crimes. When there was a report of a struggle at a book seller who specialized in tomes on alchemy and blood magic, it seemed possible there might be some connection to the blood magicians we sought. The officers who were first to the scene reported finding the fox covered in blood and the proprietor dead. He was arrested and brought to Phoenix's anti-alchemy cell for questioning. He maintained his innocence, even when I questioned him personally. He was..."

Cencerro's face briefly contorted; it seemed difficult for him to say the next few words. "He might have been telling the truth. It's possible he was framed as a distraction, to make us waste resources trying to find a connection between him and the blood magicians that didn't exist while depriving us of an alchemist who might have helped fend the barbarians off."

Bogo couldn't help but note that not a single one of the fourteen mammals huddled in the corner of the room was a fox or a bunny, and he was curious as to why. "Not even an hour after I questioned him, barbarians came pouring out of the ground. There are dozens of access points into the ruins of Quimichpatlan Barony that we know—that we _knew_ —of, and probably dozens more that we didn't. The City Guard was spread too thin searching. We were caught totally unprepared," Cencerro said.

"They fought under the banner of the Betrayer," Cencerro said, but before he could continue Bogo interrupted for the first time.

"The Betrayer?" Bogo said, "Are you sure?"

"Positive," Cencerro said, nodding.

"It was fighting like I've never seen," Cencerro continued, and his voice sounded as haunting to Bogo's ears as it likely would have sounded had there been any emotion to it, "Torcs in Phoenix don't function, you know. It was a slaughter, thousands of barbarians against us. Killing mammals in the most brutal ways possible, laughing and speaking their strange tongue."

"Did you see the leader of the barbarians?" Bogo asked.

His words sounded surprisingly calm to his own ears. But the cold certainty that Cencerro spoke with, and the confirmation of the existence of an army from Del Mar's observations made it feel oppressively true. Bogo would have to be the first mammal in centuries to fight off invaders from outside Zootopia, and he needed as much information as possible.

Cencerro shook his head. "No. But I did see the two blood magicians we were looking for helping the barbarians. I rallied as many mammals as I could, and we fought our way to the bridge. Master Rogelio—he was Phoenix's lone member of the Alchemist Guild—stayed back with his apprentice to destroy the bridge after as many residents as possible had evacuated."

Cencerro fell silent, and Bogo considered him carefully. Phoenix only had a few hundred members of the City Guard, and it certainly sounded plausible to him that a surprise attack from underground could have been more a slaughter than a battle. That mammals might take advantage of the ruins of the barony Phoenix had been built on top of to get to the settlement certainly made sense; everything Cencerro had said had the ring of truth to it.

And yet, he couldn't help but wonder what the barbarians had been trying to accomplish and how they had come into contact with blood magicians. "What happened to the fox and the bunny?" Bogo asked, instead choosing to go with questions he thought Cencerro was more likely to be able to answer.

"Ensign Totchli volunteered to stay behind and protect Master Rogelio to cover our escape," Cencerro said, "I have to believe she died an honorable death with the other defenders."

It was an unexpectedly charitable sentiment from the notoriously sentiment-free sheep, and Bogo couldn't help but wonder if it was true. It seemed absurd to think that a bunny could be so brave as to stay behind and fight a hopeless battle. Her sacrifice hadn't even saved a dozen civilians, but it was to the highest ideals of the City Guard that she had given her life anyway. Perhaps Bogo had misjudged her.

Or perhaps it had been a ruse, either meant to trick Cencerro or as part of a trick he was in on. That certainly seemed more plausible than for a timid little bunny to have such an outsized devotion to protecting civilians. "I don't know what happened to the fox. He was in an anti-alchemy cell when the attack started, and I didn't see him while we were fighting our way out," Cencerro continued.

That was, to Bogo's mind, significantly more worrisome. The fox had either died an unfortunate death, the victim of circumstance, or he had been involved in the plot and had never been in any danger. It certainly seemed suggestive that the barbarians fought under the Betrayer's banner; could this alchemist be a descendant of that long-dead fox? Then again, perhaps he had been framed for precisely that reason.

Cencerro had provided Bogo with more questions than he had answers, but one thing was absolutely clear: the situation in Phoenix demanded a response. It made Bogo's decision easy to make, whether Cencerro was lying or not. "I brought an army to deal with the problem," Bogo said, "And you're coming with."

Bogo thought Cencerro might have grown grayer under his wool, but the sheep didn't say anything for a long moment. "When do we leave, Captain General?"

Bogo didn't even pause before answering.

"Now."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

I tried something a bit different with chapter 33; as Judy has venom coursing through her veins and a terrible injury to her arm, the narration is a bit disjointed as she bounces between reality and her imagination. When Nick tells his story, it's not that she's jumped back in time or is otherwise observing what happened; it's all colored by her own memories and knowledge as she imagines it. How accurate all of what she imagines is, therefore, something of an open question.

Chapter 33 does also link back a fair amount to previous chapters. Complete philosopher's stones, which are vividly red in color, have been mentioned a few times previously, as have incomplete philosopher's stones, which are white. However, back in chapter 13 when Nick was treating himself for the black eye Judy gave him in their sparring match, she noted that the bandages he was using glowed with an unusual pink light, which matches the stones he used in chapter 33. For the sake of distinguishing between the various types, in these notes I'll call what Nick's created as imperfect philosopher's stones, which are partway between incomplete and complete ones. As Judy noted in chapter 13, they're more powerful than incomplete stones, capable of much more rapid healing, but in chapter 33 Nick does at least claim that they're not as powerful as complete ones.

That Fermina was, in fact, Big's daughter Fernanda was something that several readers guessed; there are a number of clues pointing toward the connection. Beside the species and accent, Big himself claimed that he didn't know where his daughter was back in chapter 8. Several times now Judy has picked up on signs from Nick that were meant to be indicative of two things: one, that she was getting better at reading him, and two, that he was lying to her about something.

As for this chapter, I don't have too much to add.

"Del Mar" is Spanish for "of the sea," which struck me as an appropriate surname for a sea otter.

Although Bogo doesn't think particularly highly of Judy, their thoughts do sometimes run along similar lines; in chapter 15 Judy's narration also compared Diego Cencerro to an illustration from a City Guard rulebook for how to wear the uniform.

In chapter 13, Judy noted that Phoenix seemed large enough for a few thousand residents her own size before it started getting cramped. This chapter at last reveals a total population number, which I've assumed includes all mammals. Considering how much mammals vary in size, seven thousand residents seemed reasonable; the smaller mammals would occupy very little physical space.

Next week will go back to Nick and Judy; hopefully you still found this chapter entertaining! As always, I'd love to know what you thought!


	35. Chapter 35

When Judy woke up she had no idea where she was or how she had got there. The ceiling above her was rough stone, glistening stalactites reflecting the light of an alchemical torch that must have been on the floor. She sat up gingerly; her entire body was aching and sore as though she had somehow crammed a month's worth of exercise into a single session. Nick was sprawled on his belly in front of her, his limbs splayed at odd angles and his tongue dangling out of his mouth as he quietly snored.

Seeing him suddenly brought back her memory of what had happened. She remembered the attack by the Ehecatls and her arm nearly being torn off and—she spun her head to look at her left arm so fast that her head swam and she nearly collapsed back to the floor.

Once the dizziness had subsided, Judy examined her arm as carefully as she could. It was completely wrapped in bandages from the tips of her fingers all the way up to her shoulder—the bandages even went under her quilted tunic through the ragged edge Nick must have made by cutting the sleeve off—but she had all of her fingers.

Relief washed over her as she experimentally flexed her fingers, each individually bandaged as though she was wearing a glove; they felt a little stiff, but the bandages were on the tight side. The clean cotton of the wrappings was covered with what she recognized as Nick's writing, the letters of incomprehensible words and symbols looking decidedly hurried as they wove in and out of geometric lines that had been drawn with far more precision.

Judy looked away from her miraculously intact arm to the mammal who had done it. Looking at Nick, who seemed more as though he had collapsed rather than simply fallen asleep, brought with it the memories of the story he had told her. Judy frowned, trying to put them in order. Her recollection was dream-like, things that she couldn't have possibly seen blending with what Nick had told her to the point she wasn't sure she could untangle them. But she remembered enough that she thought she had the thread of it, from what had driven him to become an alchemist without any formal instruction to what he had done with his ability.

Which included his admission that he had done work for the crime lord Tlatoani.

Protocol demanded that she arrest him and either give him over to a beat officer for processing or bring him directly to a City Guard outpost herself for questioning. It was all very clearly laid out in the written code she had sworn to uphold; Judy could picture the exact paragraph that laid it out as though the book was in front of her.

And yet...

Judy watched as Nick shifted in his slumber. Any sly or cunning expression to his face had been erased by sleep so that she could project practically any emotion onto him. "Nick?" she said, tentatively.

He stirred again, yawning and stretching, and pushed himself into a sitting position before regarding her with bleary eyes. His fur was matted from how he had slept, chalk dust caked to him so thickly in places that he and his clothes had white spots. Judy could see he had fallen asleep atop a massive alchemical drawing, the lines somewhat blurred from where he had rubbed against them while asleep but still sharp enough to make out complex shapes and symbols that must have somehow connected him to her. As his eyes met hers, his expression suddenly sharpened.

Nick still looked tired—exhausted would probably be the better word—but his eyes were as bright as they ever were. "How do you feel?" he asked.

His face was uncharacteristically furrowed with concern, but there was something else to his expression that she couldn't name. Sorrow, perhaps? Did he regret opening up to her about his past? Judy pushed the thought aside. "A little sore, but you saved my life. And my arm," she said, smiling, "You're an amazing alchemist."

Judy held her arm in front of her, waggling her fingers. She had expected that Nick would be happy to see how well his alchemy had worked; she had certainly never heard of anyone but a master alchemist restoring such a terrible injury. Instead, though, his ears fell flat against his head. "About that," he said, and he leaned forward to grasp her left paw between his own.

Nick began unwinding the bandages from her fingers with an odd sort of hesitance Judy didn't understand. Just from how gingerly he did it she had half-expected to see something horrible, her flesh bare and covered with hideous scars that exposed raw bone. But her fingers looked almost normal. Almost.

All of her fingers were there, although the fur covering them was much darker than it normally was. She supposed that something he had used might have dyed her fur as a side effect, but as the bandages came clear of her wrist she realized that couldn't be it.

There was something _off_ about her fingers; although they all moved when she tried waggling them they just somehow didn't look right, as though the proportions were wrong. There was something strange about the fur on her wrist and forearm, which was the same oddly dark color as that on her fingers, but it wasn't until the bandages were gone to about halfway up to her elbow that she realized what it was. The dark brown, which looked different than the rest of her fur, as though its texture wasn't the same, gradually gave way to a familiar red-orange.

Judy spun her paw around to look at her palm. Not only was the fur on it no longer white, she had pads. Paw pads, like no bunny did. But precisely like a fox. Or even more specifically, precisely like Nick.

Her heart was suddenly beating so loudly in her chest it was a wonder he couldn't hear it. Her mouth had gone completely dry as she couldn't help but stare at her altered paw in disbelief. There was no question, though, that it was somehow a part of her, her left arm and paw looking exactly like Nick's at a smaller scale.

Judy looked up from her palm, which didn't seem as though it was really hers anymore, to look at Nick. He pulled the rest of the bandages away but she didn't need to look to know what she would see. "I couldn't save your arm," he said, quietly.

He was averting his eyes, looking down at the ground. "If I had been a better alchemist, if I had a complete philosopher's stone... I don't know if anyone can fix—"

Judy didn't give him the chance to finish. It still made her head swim to move so fast, but she threw herself at him, wrapping both arms around his torso. He was warm in her grasp, and if things felt a little different in her left arm, what did it matter? She wasn't dead and she still had an arm. A very odd one, it was true, unlike any mammal she had ever seen before, but that was nothing. Perhaps she was now some kind of chimera, but the _princess_ was a chimera and she was the heir to the throne no matter what anyone else thought. "You _did_ save my arm," Judy said firmly, "And my life. I would have died without you, Nick."

He seemed uncomfortable in her grasp, and she gently pulled her arms away. "How did you do it?" Judy asked, "I've never seen anything like it."

Nick still seemed reluctant to look at her, but perhaps retreating into his knowledge of alchemy was enough, because he gave her the ghost of a smile. "I couldn't isolate the venom, and the imperfect philosopher's stones I made weren't working fast enough. So I... I copied my arm and about half my organs into you. After scaling them down the same way I did your sword," he said.

Nick gave a sort of half-shrug. "I got the idea out of an old book on chimeras but I didn't know if it would work," he finished simply.

Judy looked from him back to her left paw. It was still bizarre to have it so altered, but there was no questioning that it was a part of her. There was a line of demarcation about three inches past her shoulder where what remained of the arm she had been born with transitioned into the arm Nick had given her. The transition was somewhat blurred, gray and red-orange fur mixing together for a few inches, and there were some branching lines of fox fur that continued up into her bunny fur. Blood vessels, she supposed, with the skin above them altered by the alchemy Nick had done to connect her body to the new limb. "It's amazing," Judy said, "Thank you."

Nick shook his head vehemently. "I made you a _chimera_ ," he said, "You don't—"

"You think mammals might hate me for what I am now?" Judy asked, "That they might think I'm a freak?"

He nodded. "Do _you_ hate me for what I am?" Judy asked.

Nick looked up from the floor, seeming surprised by the question. "Of course not!" he said.

"Then it doesn't matter," Judy replied, "I was already the first bunny to join the City Guard, you know. I can deal with anything other mammals say."

She was rewarded with a smile from Nick. A genuine one, the warmth of which seemed to go down to her heart. "I don't understand how you can be so optimistic," he said, shaking his head, "But it must not just be a bunny thing since you're part fox now."

Judy laughed. "It's who I am," she said, and then she gestured at her left arm, "This doesn't change that."

"Your brains are all still bunny," Nick replied, and there was something of his normal sly expression back on his face, "That must be it."

"It must be," Judy agreed, and she stood up.

It took her a moment to steady herself; she wasn't quite as dizzy as she had been when she had first woken up, but her entire body still ached. How much of that was due to the venom and how much was due to how Nick had made her whole again she couldn't even begin to guess; she thought it likely that no one alive had undergone what she had. All the chimeras she had ever heard of had been created prior to their birth, creating a totally new blend of two mammals. Having one limb from a different species, even if it had been appropriately sized to her other arm, was rather unique. But she had meant everything she said to Nick. If more mammals stared and whispered while she went about her job, it wouldn't bother her any more than the stares and whispers she had already gotten while still in Zootopia's heart. Besides, when she was wearing a uniform with an intact sleeve she doubted anyone would notice.

But she pushed all of that aside. "Nick," she said, and her heart was starting to race again, "There was something I wanted to ask you."

It seemed as though it had been ages ago when they had been standing together immediately before the monster savaged her arm and interrupted her. Nick was still sitting, and it made them almost the same height. Seeing him there, looking into his eyes without having to crane her neck up, made any words she might have fumbled over fall out of her mind.

She kissed him.

It was like nothing she had ever experienced, nothing like what the gossip of her older sisters had led her to expect. Her nose was full of the scent of him, strong and yet with a pleasantly floral undertone, and the taste of him against her tongue was indescribable. For an instant she could feel him against her, the sensation so strong there wasn't room for anything else. The entire world was just the two of them again, but there was no pain, no monsters. There was nothing to keep them apart and Judy wished the moment could last forever.

And then Nick pulled himself away.

"No," Nick said, "No, no, Judy—Carrots I can't. You must not remember, but—"

Judy pulled him closer again. "I remember the story you told me," she said.

He went suddenly limp, undisguised surprise etched on his face. "You do?"

"I do."

"And you don't... Care?" Nick asked, his words delicate and hesitant.

His expression was heart-breaking. There was the usual somewhat cynical cast to his features, but Judy was sure she saw hope. Frail and small, but it was there, perhaps the ghost of what he had once had when he had dreamed of being taught by members of the Alchemist Guild. But if his life had taken that path, would it have ever intersected with hers? She couldn't be glad that he had experienced what he did, but she was very glad to have him.

Judy pulled herself close until her lips were almost touching his again, her fingers buried in the soft fur of his cheeks. "I'm going to want to hear all the details I didn't catch," she said, "But that can wait."

"It can?"

She kissed him again, and he didn't pull back until they were both out of breath. "It can."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

It's come up in this story before that in order to create a new shape for an object using alchemy, it's necessary to either have an alchemical grid defining that shape or an actual physical object to copy. Nick used both when he made Judy's sword, first using an elaborate pattern drawn on a cloth to make the sword and then copying his own head in miniature for the pommel.

In this chapter, Nick's method for saving Judy is more or less the same as that latter example; not being able to transmute the venom into something harmless without causing more damage, he instead effectively overwrote Judy's injured arm with a copy of his own left arm (albeit at a smaller scale) and did the same for her injured internal organs.

Him noting that Judy's brain is still completely bunny isn't just me taking some artistic license. In many animals (and, notably, humans with our complex brains), there's something called the blood-brain barrier that effectively isolates the brain from pathogens. Essentially, there's a semipermeable membrane (more or less a sieve that keeps molecules above a certain size out) rather than a direct connection, and this has several benefits. First and foremost, it's a function of your brain's immune system; this kind of isolation means that blood-born infections reaching the brain are extremely rare, since not much can cross the blood-brain barrier if it's functioning correctly. An infection of your brain is a notably bad thing, since it generally doesn't handle inflammation very well.

In this case, it can be assumed that whatever venom the Ehecatls secrete is composed of molecules large enough not to be able to cross the brain-blood barrier. If it had, Nick's efforts to save Judy would probably be rather unsuccessful, or would at least result in some pretty radical changes if he copied over chunks of her brain with his own.

This change for Judy was actually one of the first parts of the story that I wrote; I got the mental image of Judy with one fox arm and then the story kind of expanded in both directions around that as I worked out what led up to that moment and what came after. There were a lot of revisions between that initial idea and the chapter that you just read now, but I thought it was a pretty striking thing to have happen. Rabbits do indeed lack paw pads (a detail you can see in the movie with Judy) while foxes do have them, which would be quite the difference for Judy to experience.

As to everything else in this chapter, well, I've always figured that chapters should be as long or as short as necessary. This one ended up on the short side compared to others, but as it's the end result of an enormous amount of buildup it didn't seem right to make it any longer. I do hope you enjoyed it, but as always I'd love to hear what you thought!


	36. Chapter 36

No army, no matter how well-trained, could be nearly as fast as a single mammal. It was a thought Bogo tried to keep in mind as his guardsmammals—his soldiers—prepared to leave the Middle Baronies. Tzitz Quit had been designed to repel invasion, after all, and the same factors that made it difficult to take made it difficult to leave. The pillar it stood on had a single massive lift that led from its base to the outpost, with the only other way in or out being a relatively narrow wooden staircase that had been replaced dozens or perhaps hundreds of times over the years. It was one of those expenses that lords always complained about, but Bogo followed the lead of all of his predecessors and refused to replace the wood stairs with stone ones. He knew exactly why they were made of wood; if an opposing army did invade, the lift could be raised and the stairs set aflame, denying them access to the aqueducts.

Of course, the knowledge that Oveja I had simply breached the Middle Wall and ignored the aqueducts on his path into the city's core demonstrated that not every preparation worked. But Oveja I had been leading a war of conquest, and he had left as much infrastructure intact as possible since anything he damaged he would have to repair later. Bogo, though, had no idea what the mysterious army under the banner of the Betrayer wanted. They might want to take over the city, as Oveja I had, or perhaps they simply wanted to destroy it. Not knowing what his enemy had planned made Bogo deeply uneasy.

As did the fact that he wasn't even sure who his enemy was.

None of the other survivors of Phoenix had spoken a word even after Bogo's interview with Diego Cencerro was done. It was strange, and some part of him didn't like it. They certainly appeared shocked—as he would expect any mammal to be after experiencing horrific violence—but something deep in his gut didn't trust the reaction. It was entirely possible that he was being too hard on the mammals; unlike the City Guard most Zootopians never saw violence of any kind due to the effectiveness of torcs, and even in Phoenix he supposed habit was enough to keep that mostly true. He himself would never forget the stench of blood from the first murder he had responded to, and that had been bad enough to make his partner resign. If members of the City Guard couldn't tolerate violent death, what chance did coddled civilians have?

But the nagging doubt refused to leave Bogo, and he had ordered Del Mar to keep the remaining survivors under close supervision rather than allowing them their freedom. He had couched it with a bit more subtlety, of course; he had made the order sound more as though he was concerned with their mental health than that he was worried what they might do. If the otter had spotted his true motive, he hadn't commented on it, which left Bogo with at least one concern mostly addressed.

One of his other concerns stood at his side; as he supervised the movement of City Guard members from Tzitz Quit to the ground, he wasn't letting Diego Cencerro out of his sight. He had to admit to himself that his suspicions of the sheep might be motivated more by his own personal dislike of him—and the way in which he had obtained the job as commander of the Phoenix City Guard—and the blood relationship with Alba Cencerro than by anything the sheep had done to set him off.

But Bogo believed in listening to his instincts even if he didn't always choose to act on them, and while Diego Cencerro hadn't done anything obviously suspicious that didn't mean he was trustworthy. Another part of his mind told him he was being ridiculous. Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro was travel-worn and injured; would he have really cut a chunk out of one of his own ears?

 _That's exactly what he would_ want _you to think if he did_ , a voice whispered in Bogo's mind, and he frowned. The voice was, of course, his own, and even as he carefully studied Cencerro his thoughts continued. _Gangs do it to their members sometimes. And if they can stand the pain, a member of the City Guard could._

But unless Diego Cencerro had somehow gained the ability to read minds, he was blissfully unaware of Bogo's dark thoughts about him, standing near the base of Tzitz Quit and watching members of the City Guard pour out of the lift at regular intervals and take up formation on the grounds surrounding the outpost. He hadn't even taken any time to change out of his dirty and blood-stained clothes, and it lent him a somewhat tougher air than a sheep could normally manage. Despite the clothes, though, his posture was still perfect, his attention focused solely on the army Bogo was bringing down to the ground one lift load at a time.

"Do you think we have enough mammals?" Bogo asked abruptly.

Cencerro turned toward him, a slight frown touching his features as he seemed to consider the question. "To retake Phoenix, sir?"

"To retake Phoenix," Bogo agreed.

Cencerro was silent a moment, and Bogo wondered if his thoughts were going the same direction his own had. His force consisted of just over two thousand mammals, a mixture of the City Guard and the personal forces of Lady Cencerro and Lords Corazón and Cerdo. Two thousand mammals, none of whom had ever fought a war before, going up against an unknown force. Perhaps they really were barbarians, but other possibilities came to mind, each more outlandish than the last. A massive force someone had managed to put together in Zootopia and march to Phoenix without anyone noticing? An army of mythical homunculi created by an alchemist more powerful than even the masters of the Alchemist Guild? Something put together by blood magicians?

Cencerro spoke again at last. "I don't have a good estimate of the size of the barbarian army," he said at last, "They struck by surprise, when my forces were spread thin. Under those circumstances, even a small army can fight like a large one."

Bogo grunted an acknowledgement and waited for the sheep to continue.

"I believe we have enough mammals," Cencerro said at last, "But I can't help but be concerned that they made no attempt to chase the survivors down. It makes me wonder what they want."

The sheep's face was its usual mask; Bogo was forcefully reminded of how unemotional and detached the officer was. He was speaking like a mammal faced with an intriguing logic problem—like the one with a chicken, a monitor lizard, a bag of grain, and a rowboat—instead of what might be the greatest threat Zootopia had ever faced. Unless, of course, he had arranged the threat and was quietly mocking Bogo for not seeing that.

"What do you think they want?" Bogo asked, and he was genuinely curious.

If Cencerro was involved in whatever was going on, perhaps he'd accidentally give something away. And if he wasn't, perhaps he had seen something Bogo hadn't. There was one possibility he had in mind he wanted to see if Cencerro would suggest, and if so how he would do it.

"Phoenix has great strategic value as the point of the one opening between Zootopia and the outside world, and holding it would be of immense value to an invading army. Without alchemists to make additional breaches in the Outer Wall, it's a choke point they must hold or be beaten back at our leisure. Occupying the settlement makes sense if their goal is to conquer us," Cencerro said.

It was nothing that Bogo hadn't already thought of himself, but it was somewhat unsatisfying as an answer. If Bogo was in charge of an invading army, he would have followed Oveja I's strategy as best he could. Under that model, the invading army would hold Phoenix only loosely, with the majority of their forces committed to taking the rest of the city-state. To simply hold Phoenix with no further action was bizarre; they had lost any element of surprise.

"Alternatively," Cencerro continued, speaking more slowly, "Phoenix's most obvious resource outside its strategic position is the ruins it was built on top of. There are treasures down there we can't even guess at, so perhaps the invaders simply want something in the ruins. The Betrayer was said to have had a laboratory in Quimichpatlan Barony, after all."

Bogo wasn't sure what he thought of that theory. Even if the fox had held some kind of secret blood magic lab it could have easily have been destroyed when Oveja II ordered the barony razed. Or found and looted between the Betrayer's death and when the barony had been destroyed. The theory did explain what the invaders might be after, though, and Bogo considered it.

"Perhaps," Bogo said, "Any other theories?"

Cencerro laughed ruefully, and the sound was unnatural to Bogo's ears. The sheep simply didn't seem like the sort of mammal to have a sense of humor at all—something Bogo knew mammals also said about him—and it just didn't sound right. "None that make any more sense than those two, I'm afraid. It might be a trap, but I don't see to what end."

The possibility of it being a trap had weighed heavily on Bogo's mind, but the way Cencerro had suggested it wasn't exactly comforting. Admittedly, he couldn't see how it would work as a trap. Were there hundreds or thousands more warriors, hidden underground and waiting to strike in a pincer movement when Bogo and his defenders got too close? Or was it perhaps a trap intended for a single mammal? Had whoever planned the invasion known that they could successfully lure the queen and princess outside the relative safety of the palace?

It was enough to give Bogo a headache. There was, however, at least one trap he knew about that no one else did. If someone on the defender's side was plotting to assassinate the princess or queen en route, he meant to find them. "Yes," Bogo said at last, "It might be a trap."

* * *

Shortly after their not entirely comforting conversation, Bogo had brought Diego Cencerro over to meet the group of mammals he was particularly interested in seeing how he would react to. As they approached the tent that had been set up for the queen and princess while they awaited their army's preparations, Bogo kept one hoof loosely around the hilt of his macuahuitl; if the sheep tried anything he wouldn't live long enough to regret it.

When they were perhaps ten feet away from the tent, Bogo heard the familiar sound of the princess's laughter, and his grip involuntarily tightened. It had been, he realized, some time since he had last heard her sounding anywhere near as carefree. He couldn't see what she found so entertaining, however, since the royal tent was made out of cloth so richly embroidered that it was entirely opaque, with not so much as a vague shadow of the occupants visible.

In fact, calling it a tent wasn't quite right; that was far too unimpressive a word for what had been set up. A marquee, perhaps, more accurately captured the size and grandeur of the tent, which was larger than the apartment Bogo had grown up in. It was at least forty feet on a side, all composed of thickly quilted panels so perfectly aligned that the seams were all but invisible from a distance. Beneath the dramatically slanted roof of the tent, which was at least fifteen feet above the ground, and the wall panels was a cunningly made bit of mesh that would let air in but wouldn't admit rain. Two guards stood on either side of the entrance—which despite being a flap was still far more well-crafted than any piece of clothing Bogo owned—and admitted the two of them in short order.

Inside, the tent had a full office made out of furniture that was lightweight but still sumptuously carved, as well as a number of collapsible chairs so thickly cushioned that they looked as comfortable as a normal chair. Cheerful light was provided by half a dozen alchemical torches in beautiful holders hung from the pillars which supported the tent; even the pillars were richly decorated. The queen and princess weren't alone in the tent, but their company wasn't just Alba Cencerro, Leodore Corazón, and Esteban Cerdo as Bogo thought it might have been. They were arranged in a loose semicircle—which left plenty of space in the massive tent—around a curious sight. There was a large bird with the saddle and reins that marked it as the ride of a messenger, but there was no mammal on its back. Instead, on the thick carpet that covered the ground, was a little mouse laboriously shufflin three walnut shells around.

The bird, which looked to Bogo's admittedly inexpert eye to be some sort of hawk, was watching the proceedings gravely, its head cocked to one side as it followed the motion of the three shells until the mouse stopped. "Which one, Papalote?" he asked in his high little voice.

The bird reached its head forward and pecked at the shell on the far right. The mouse beamed at the bird, even as the princess enthusiastically clapped an instant before anyone else did. "Good girl, Papalote," he said, lifting the shell with a dramatic flourish, "Good girl."

There was what looked to Bogo like a dried piece of fish under the shell, and the bird struck at it and gobbled it down the instant it was exposed. "She's so clever," the princess said, "What's it like to be able to fly?"

"Oh, it's the most amazing thing you can imagine, your highness," the mouse replied, cutting a low bow before stroking at the feathers of his bird, "To see the world spread beneath you like a—"

The mouse was cut off by a delicate cough from Lady Cencerro; evidently the other mammals in the tent had been too enraptured by the performance the messenger was putting on to have noticed Bogo's arrival. "Ah!" the mouse squeaked, spinning in place to face Bogo, "You must be Captain General Bogo! It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, milord."

The mouse bowed again, not quite as low as he had to the princess. "Carlos of Phoenix at your service, but you can call me Camoti."

"Camoti?" Bogo asked, feeling his eyebrows raise involuntarily; it was one of the oddest and least fitting nicknames he had ever heard. The little mouse looked as slim and athletic as a mouse could, wearing a set of riding clothes made out of fish leather dyed a deep black that made the narrow bib of white fur under his muzzle stand out sharply. Otherwise, what little of the mouse's fur Bogo could see was a soft brown without any signs of lightening with age; he guessed that the messenger wasn't past his mid-twenties.

"Camoti," the mouse agreed cheerfully, "And I recognize Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro, although I am sorry to say we have never met, sir."

The mouse's tiny features flickered in concern. "Oh my, are you quite all right, sir?"

If Diego Cencerro had noticed the little mouse's display of how clever his bird was or felt anything at all about being asked how he was, it didn't show on the sheep's face. "Fine," he said shortly, and then turned his attention to the queen and princess.

"Your majesties," he said, falling to his knees in supplication, "I apologize for my failure. That Phoenix was—"

"Enough," Queen Lana said, interrupting him with a wave of one hoof, "Unless you invited these barbarians into Phoenix, you have nothing to apologize for."

She spoke the words in a rather kindly fashion, but Bogo was sure that everyone else heard the implicit threat in it. If Diego Cencerro had simply had the poor luck of being in charge when Phoenix got invaded, he wouldn't receive any kind of punishment. If he was responsible, though, he doubted that the queen would be particularly merciful. "Thank you, your majesty," he replied, still on his knees.

"Rise, Lieutenant Colonel," she said, and he did so with what seemed like great concern for doing so in a dignified manner.

"Goodness, Diego, you do look quite a fright," Lady Cencerro said once he was standing again.

She spoke rather casually, which Bogo found interesting. Evidently, she wasn't going to pretend as though she didn't know her cousin, although even for sheep they strongly resembled each other to the point that it was obvious they were related. "Getting out of Phoenix was... difficult," he replied, his face still free of emotion even as he chose his last word.

"I'm sure," Camoti jumped in with a rather astounding lack of manners; although his torc was difficult to see on his tiny neck, it didn't mark him as a lord and he obviously wasn't a member of the City Guard.

Bogo thought he knew why the messenger was in the queen's tent, though, and what he said next confirmed his suspicion. "I had a much easier time of it, but there weren't any barbarians for Papalote and me to deal with when we left!"

"Now that Lord Bogo is here, perhaps you could tell the story again," Corazón suggested, giving Bogo a quick side glance, "I'm sure he'll find it interesting."

"Well, there's not much to tell," Camoti said, glancing around the tent, "But if you insist, milord, I'll be happy to."

He doffed an imaginary hat in the lion's direction before turning to Bogo. "Papalote and I fly between Phoenix and the Middle Wall every few days. It barely stretches her wings, a fine bird like her," he said.

As he spoke, he reached up to scratch at the feathers under the hawk's neck. Her eyes closed in apparent pleasure as she lowered her head to give her diminutive master access to her neck itself, and he fondly ran the tiny fingers of his paw through the thick feathers as he continued to speak. "It wasn't too unusual a morning. Aluisa and Darmita—"

"A vole and a jerboa," Corazón cut in, rather unexpectedly.

"Yes, milord, they are indeed," Camoti said, seeming a bit surprised by the interruption, but he picked up the thread of his story quickly.

"They had left before I did. Aluisa rides an owl, you see, so she always flies at night. Darmita usually has a bit of a late start, since her husband lives in Phoenix and they only see each other when she flies in, but I heard they had a bit of a fight the night before and she was in no mood to, ah, lie in bed."

Camoti broke off from his narrative to flash Bogo a brilliant smile. "Something I hope you've never dealt with, milord."

Bogo had no intention of dignifying that with a response, and the mouse must have read his expression because he gave a quick cough and continued. "There were more guards about than usual, and all of Phoenix was alive with rumors, but I didn't see anything odd myself. Poor Fermina seemed awful nervous about them; I told her I heard they were looking for some kind of magician and _she_ asked—"

"Who's Fermina?" Bogo asked, a bit more sharply than he had intended.

Bogo had followed the significance of Corazón's interruption; a mouse, a vole, and a jerboa were the last three messengers out of Phoenix before the attack, and Camoti was obviously the mouse. It didn't seem as though he had seen anything of useful except whatever he had to say about this Fermina. "Another messenger, milord, rather new to it. She's been doing local messages and deliveries only—local to Phoenix, you understand—but me and the girls have been telling her the real money is in trips between the Middle Baronies and Phoenix. And with a bird like hers..."

Camoti shook his head. "Golden eagle just as gentle as you could like. The mark of a good rider, training their bird so well; it's why I've taught Papalote so many clever tricks, isn't it dear?"

He scratched even harder at the hawk's neck, the bird clearly enjoying it. "A golden eagle?" Bogo asked.

Pieces were suddenly clicking into place in his mind, and he thought he saw the significance of it. "Fermina's a shrew, isn't she?"

"You _are_ the clever sort, milord!" Camoti replied, "However did you guess?"

"That's not important," Bogo said, barely masking his impatience, "Where did she go?"

"Oh, well, she decided to finally take our advice, I suppose," Camoti said with a shrug, "Left for the Middle Wall much happier than I'd ever seen her. And that's that, really. I didn't even see this army of barbarians. I'm glad, too, let me tell you; Papalote doesn't deserve an arrow between her wings even if I do."

He smiled at his little self-deprecating joke, but Bogo was already lost in his own thoughts. More likely than not, Fermina was really the daughter of Alfonso of New Quimichin. She must have fled to Phoenix, knowing that if she ever tried returning the City Guard could use her torc to identify her. Phoenix, though, was much looser, and far easier for a fugitive to get by without drawing attention to themselves. But what had made her leave so suddenly, shortly before Phoenix was attacked? And, Bogo couldn't help but note, shortly after an alchemist fox had showed up. And where had she gone? It clearly wasn't to any of the official aviaries in the Middle Baronies as she hadn't been on the list of the last official messengers to leave Phoenix.

Bogo had been confident that Alfonso had been telling the truth when he had interrogated him near the start of the whole matter. And perhaps the shrew had been honest. But might not it be possible that his daughter would want revenge for her father's arrest and imprisonment?

It was another twist at a time when he least needed twists; he wanted nothing more than for everything to stop turning along convoluted paths and start following some kind of pattern that he could understand. His army would be ready to march for Phoenix in no more than twenty minutes, and suddenly it seemed as though a key piece of the puzzle might be sitting in a cell near the city's center far away from his ability to do anything about it.

"I'll have a message for you to take to the palace, Camoti," Bogo said slowly, his mind racing to put together what he wanted to write.

From the significant look the queen gave him, Bogo suspected he knew what she wanted him to write. It was time, it seemed, for answers to come out of Alfonso by any means necessary.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

In this chapter, Bogo recalls a memory that was first shown in chapter 8, in which an elephant was reduced to a puddle of gore by his torc. As mentioned there, the sight of it did indeed make his partner resign, and in this chapter it brings up the idea of sensitization to violence. While this version of Zootopia isn't exactly at _Demolition Man_ levels of being free of violent crime, it is exceptionally rare. Add to that the fact that they don't have television, movies, or video games, the only real source of violence most inhabitants of the city would encounter would be printed word descriptions or perhaps drawings. Beyond that, they really don't have the media for depicting violence; plays might occasionally demonstrate violence, but it may be too obviously fake to be truly shocking. Whether that affects how they view violence or not, it's understandable I think that Bogo would assume extreme violence to be upsetting to normal mammals.

Bogo also thinks about a trend that I think makes a certain amount of sense in a world of assorted mammals: using ear notches to symbolize something, in this case gang affiliation. Quite a few mammals have ears so different and proportionally larger than humans that it doesn't seem too unusual that it might be a form of body modification they'd practice.

The creation of a homunculus—a living being formed by alchemy in the shape of a human—was a common goal of alchemists from about the 16th century onwards. The alchemist Paracelsus described a method of creating such a being by first fermenting human semen, placing it in the womb of a horse, and then nourishing it on a solution made from human blood. For reasons that I hope are obvious, this doesn't actually work. However, many alchemists labored at trying to artificially create life. Bogo is notably dismissive of the idea, considering it outlandish, although I suppose you could argue that the monsters under Phoenix demonstrate that the creation of artificial life is possible in this setting.

Bogo briefly thinks of a Zootopian version of a common logic puzzle that takes many forms, commonly including a fox, a chicken, and a bag of grain. The idea is that you have to transport these three items across a river in a rowboat only large enough to take one at a time, but leaving certain combinations alone is problematic. The chicken will eat the grain if left together, and the fox will eat the chicken if they're left together. I won't spoil the solution!

Bogo's macuahuitl was last mentioned in chapter 6; as described there it's kind of like a cricket bat with a razor sharp edge.

Papalote is the Nahuatl word for "kite," which seemed an appropriate name for a bird.

In chapter 24, Bogo knew of three messengers who had been the last out of Phoenix—a male mouse, a female vole, and a female jerboa. That list notably excludes a shrew, and in chapter 21 Nick claimed that Judy couldn't meet "Fermina" since she had already left Phoenix.

Camoti is the Nahuatl word for "sweet potato" which really is an odd nickname for a mouse with no obvious resemblance to one, hence Bogo's reaction.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought.


	37. Chapter 37

Everything had changed and nothing had.

It was the differences almost too subtle to notice that mattered, though. Judy was still walking through the ruins of Quimichpatlan Barony, Nick still at her side. It was almost the same as it had been. But he was closer to her now than he had been before, and sometimes his tail brushed up against her waist. It was nice.

That seemed like a horribly inadequate way of saying it, almost as though being next to the mammal she loved—and who loved her back—was no more than a sunny day or a tasty pastry. But it _was_ nice, and if Judy didn't have the words to express it any better it'd have to do. Seeing the affection in his eyes when he looked over at her made her heart melt and wish they hadn't had to press on. It hadn't been easy to break that kiss, and the thought of what could have happened next seemed to do funny things to all the blood in her body.

Then again, neither of them was in any shape to do anything but walk. No matter how much Nick's eyes sparkled, their lids drooped more than usual and there was a weariness to the very way in which he moved. Saving her life had clearly taken much more out of him than either the bit of alchemy he had performed in their cell or during their sparring match, and she didn't know how much longer he could last before he'd have to rest again.

The thought of resting brought with it the wonderful image of burying her fingers into the magnificent fluff of Nick's tail and she pushed it aside, her ears burning. Judy might need to rest herself sooner rather than later, though; her entire body still ached, except for her new arm and paw.

It was with that paw that she caught Nick's and gave it a gentle squeeze. The feeling that it wasn't quite right had receded somewhat, but Judy didn't know if it'd ever completely go away. Sometimes it felt as if it wasn't a part of her, and sometimes it did. Grasping Nick's paw, her new pads made it feel almost as though she was wearing a glove, the sensation somewhat dulled.

He squeezed back. "New arm still doing alright, Carrots?" he asked lightly.

There was the familiar teasing tone to his voice, but with something deeper to it. No matter how he had phrased the question, Judy knew his concern was genuine. "It's the only part of me that doesn't hurt," she said, and Nick nodded.

They walked in silence a while longer, but it was companionable rather than awkward. There was still plenty that they had to discuss, but for the moment it was enough to simply have each other as they continued through the ruins. The twin lights of Nick's lantern remained steady, and here and there the ghostly light of ancient and failing alchemical torches stood out against the darkness. There was a certain sameness to the tunnels, so Judy had no idea how much distance Nick had covered while carrying her in her venom-induced haze, but she got the feeling they were proceeding far off the path treasure hunters followed. Thick layers of dust on the tiled floors absorbed the sounds of their footsteps, and thick cobwebs hanging from the ceiling brushed unpleasantly against the tips of her ears until she let them droop down.

As they were coming to a junction point, Judy heard a low grumbling sound that instantly set her ears up and had her heart pounding as she prepared to deal with whatever had made the noise, a sense of calm focus washing over her as she let go of Nick's paw and drew her sword.

And then she realized it had been Nick's stomach.

"Sounds like we need to stop," Nick said, a slow smile spreading across his face; he had obviously seen her reaction.

"It does," Judy agreed, and she poked at his stomach playfully.

Nick yelped and brushed her fingers aside. "Trust me, you don't want to get between a fox and his food," he said, still smiling.

While Nick started rummaging through his pack, Judy sheathed her sword carefully, treating it with the respect it deserved as her only defense. Nick had apparently been more concerned with saving her life than her weapons and her spear was probably still on the floor of the chamber the Ehecatls had been in. As she was taking her paw away from the hilt, a question suddenly struck her. "Am I going to have to eat the same kinds of food you do?" she asked.

He had said that he had copied some of his own organs over into her—which seemed to be a bigger change than her arm even if she hadn't noticed any difference yet—and it occurred to her that it might mean something for her diet. Nick seemed to consider the question thoughtfully for a moment. "You shouldn't need to eat fish if you don't want to," he said at last, answering the unspoken question hidden in the one she had actually asked, "Foxes can eat just about anything."

His usual smirk widened into a grin as he placed one paw, fingers tented, against his chest. "The gods made us perfect like that."

Judy laughed, and he offered her the food he had pulled from his bag. There were indeed strips of dried fish, but he also had dried berries, nuts, and some rather crumbly looking hardtack with the seal of the City Guard stamped into it. Judy took a pawful of nuts and berries, and after a moment's hesitation grabbed one of the fish strips. Nick didn't say anything, just cocking his eyebrow, and watched as she sniffed it. It smelled, unsurprisingly, rather fishy, and Judy took a hesitant nibble.

She gagged at the taste, her face wrinkling in disgust; it seemed that whatever other changes might have happened to her body her sense of taste was unchanged. She gave the piece of fish back to Nick, grabbing his canteen and taking a long swig of water to get the harsh and oily taste out of her mouth. "So I'm guessing you didn't like it," Nick said, completely deadpan.

Judy didn't want to say she found it disgusting and couldn't imagine how anyone could actually enjoy fish, since that seemed more than a little rude, so she settled on, "I guess I don't like fish."

Thankfully, her taste for nuts and berries remained unchanged, and the sweetness of the dried berries was just the same as ever. Nick's appetite seemed to be enormous, and Judy idly wondered if alchemy worked just as well as exercise; it'd certainly explain how slim he was. When at last he had finished, Nick stood, offering a paw to help her stand. "No rest for the wicked," he said, smiling slightly, and Judy used him to pull herself upright.

"There's something we need to talk about," she said, and it was remarkable how Nick reacted.

The slight smile didn't leave his face, and Judy would be hard-pressed to say that anything was different about him. But through his paw she could have sworn she felt him stiffen for an instant even if his expression didn't change. "Ah," he said lightly, "It's not too late for you to change your mind about arresting me, you know."

There was a carelessness to the words that Judy refused to believe was true. He had hidden his thoughts well, and Judy doubted anyone else would have spotted what she did. But there was a sense of despair that had come into him, a sort of pessimistic doubt that she'd actually stay with him if she knew more about him. "It is, actually," Judy replied, and she put her other paw against his, "I love you, Nick."

Before he had a chance to react, Judy let go of his paw and pulled herself close to him, squeezing him into a hug. He stiffened again, for a moment, and then he was hugging her back. "Then it sounds like I'm stuck with you," he said, his voice slightly thicker than normal.

"Nick..." she said, cuddling her head against his chest, just below the hollow formed by his neck and the underside of his muzzle, "I _know_ you're a good mammal."

He bent a little until his muzzle was in the space between her ears, and it felt as though the two of them had been made for each other, they fit together so well. "I _do_ need to hear about what you did for Tlatoani, but whatever you say isn't going to change anything."

"How can you be so sure?" Nick asked, his voice barely a whisper.

"I've seen who you are when no one's watching," she said, and Nick chuckled.

Still holding Nick tight, Judy could feel it against her, starting from deep within his chest. "That doesn't sound like it should be possible," he said, and Judy could hear the smile in his voice, "But if you're sure..."

They had broken apart to start walking again, and every time Nick tried distancing himself Judy pulled closer. It took him some time to recount his days of being employed by Tlatoani, and he kept breaking off from his story to glance at Judy as though he was still afraid she'd change her mind about him. But as she patiently encouraged him on, the story did come out, and it was about what she would have expected. Tlatoani had cultivated Nick's services slowly, with a careful deliberation that seemed to Judy as though he had been testing the limits of Nick's skills while trying not to scare him off. It had been simple jobs at first, perfectly legal things any alchemist could have done, and he had rewarded Nick with what the fox wanted most—old books on alchemy. And, although Nick didn't say it directly and Judy guessed the crime lord had never put it so bluntly, respect. The shrew sounded as though he had genuinely appreciated Nick's talents, and it seemed to Judy a terrible waste that the Alchemist Guild didn't accept predators; how much stronger might Nick be if he had been formally taught and had access to the guild's private libraries?

The secret of making fake torcs might not be in those libraries—although it might; from everything she had seen herself and from hearing the story of Nick's youth, Judy didn't have high expectations for the guild—but if Nick could figure it out on his own she had no doubt that other alchemists could. From what Nick said, it wasn't something he had done very often, and not for any mammals who sounded as though they could be involved in either whatever had happened in Phoenix or in the attack on the princess.

Judy's paw brushed against her own torc, currently useless though it was, as she considered the pieces of the puzzle she had. Perhaps Cencerro had been lying when he said it, but he had claimed that if a different member of the City Guard had accompanied Nick, they would have been better able to frame Nick for the murder he had been arrested for.

Judy frowned. No, that wasn't right. Cencerro had said only that the other guardsmammal could have framed Nick before he even set foot in Phoenix, not that he would have framed Nick for that specific crime. But why? Did Cencerro know about Nick's connection to Tlatoani, and want to use it to somehow link them to his apparent coup in Phoenix?

She was so lost in her thoughts that she might have ran right into a hole in a partially collapsed tunnel if Nick hadn't gently pulled her off her path. "Careful, there," he said cheerfully, "I've only got one of you."

"I was thinking," Judy said, and Nick nodded sagely.

"I thought I smelled smoke," he said, "What about?"

"I just don't understand what Cencerro's plan is," Judy said, and she was sure her frustration was evident in her voice, "Why did he want us there? Where did he get his army? What—"

"He didn't want us there," Nick interrupted, "He wanted _me_ there. He said it wasn't supposed to be you who ended up in Phoenix. Were you a last-minute replacement for someone?"

"That's right!" Judy said, and she couldn't believe she hadn't seen the connection before.

She had been so concerned with trying to figure out what Cencerro had wanted with Nick and what he was trying to accomplish that she hadn't even considered her own role in it. "There was another guard who was supposed to do the mission but he got sick right before he could leave. Lieutenant... Lieutenant..."

Judy sucked at her teeth as she tried to remember the mammal's name. He had only graduated from the academy a year or two before she had, and as she recalled he had been at the top of his class. She had never spoken to him before, though, and she didn't have Nick's apparently perfect recall for names and faces. She thought she might not be able to remember it after all, and then suddenly she could. "Lieutenant Sakatl," she said, and she could picture the deer's face.

"What do you know about him?" Nick asked, and Judy considered the question.

Sakatl was large for a deer, but it was mostly height, not bulk; he looked to have the elegant grace his species was known for, as well as a rack of antlers larger than Judy was. Sakatl was, Judy had heard, particularly proud of those antlers, but whether he did actually become sullen when he shed them every year or if that was just a rumor that got spread about him she didn't know. Considering how he had distinguished himself walking a beat, Judy was more inclined to believe the rumor was spread by jealous mammals.

"He's a good officer, or so I've heard," Judy said slowly, "I don't really know anything else about him."

"That's not much to go on," Nick said, but his tone was thoughtful rather than discouraging, "Do you know what he was sick with?"

Judy frowned, trying to remember. She thought she knew the lines Nick's mind was working along; it might be possible that Sakatl hadn't gotten sick at all, but what that could mean only raised more questions. Cencerro's claim that Sakatl could have framed Nick while they were traveling to Phoenix certainly made it sound as though the deer was involved in the sheep's conspiracy, but perhaps his cooperation hadn't been willing. Had the lieutenant found his conscience and refused to help? If so, perhaps he had been poisoned as punishment, or he had simply claimed to be sick to get out of escorting Nick.

"No, I don't," Judy admitted at last; no matter how she had scoured her memory she didn't think anyone had ever told her what Sakatl was suffering from.

"Something to follow up on once we get back, then," Nick said, and Judy nodded.

She wasn't able to set the puzzle aside, though, and she kept trying to figure out the extent of Cencerro's plans all the way up until the point that they came to the gorge formed by the destruction of Quimichpatlan Barony. Judy heard the sound of running water long before they reached the crack in the earth, but at last they were there. She was surprised at how deep underground they had traveled as they made their way to the limits of Phoenix; there was a narrow and jagged patch of lightness far overhead that was the only sign of daylight.

Where they stood, though, was near a blistered and cracked wall of rock, thickly coated with vividly green moss. The spray from the waterfall made everything damp and earthy smelling, and the long years that had passed since it had formed were clear in the rock. The elaborate mosaics and tiling of the tunnel they were in were badly eroded where they hadn't melted and run with the heat of whatever bit of magic had split the ground, the details blurred away into a vague fuzziness. The gap from one side of the tunnel to the other, across the gorge, was even wider than Judy would have guessed from her time on the surface; it was perhaps five hundred feet from one side to the other.

There was no visible path; some columns of stone had collapsed and protruded from the walls on either side like uneven teeth in a yawning mouth, but the irregular protrusions didn't even come close to meeting up. Looking down, the gorge descended into such pitch-black darkness that it was impossible to tell how much deeper the ruins went. Nick studied the gap with a serious eye, and Judy noted that he was studiously avoiding looking down. "Would it be easier if we kept going down?" she asked, "Cross the gap at the bottom?"

Nick shook his head. "The lower levels are all flooded, and there are more things down there we don't want to meet."

The memory of the Ehetcatl tearing at her arm was suddenly painfully vivid. "You can make a bridge across this gap?" she asked, and Nick shot her a sidelong glance.

"You don't think I can?" he asked, "Do you still doubt my skills?"

His tone was teasing and playful, but Judy pulled his paw into her own. "You're exhausted," she said, "I can tell. If making a bridge now might... might kill you I—"

"It won't kill me, Judy," he interrupted, but his expression had softened, "It'll probably give me the worst headache the gods ever cursed a mammal with, but I'll live."

"You promise?"

"I promise," Nick said, and that was that.

It took him nearly an hour to draw out a complicated diagram with a nub of chalk, which he did with a precision that made his previous alchemical transmutations look sloppy. Several times he stopped, erased a line, and replaced it with one that didn't look any different to Judy. He muttered to himself as he worked, and Judy watched in silence until he was done. The pattern he had drawn had a certain almost mathematical beauty to it, a series of spiraling triangles within a circle that seemed to be spinning to infinity or receding into it depending on how Judy looked at it. Nick set his focuses with exquisite care, and then set his paws against the circle, his eyes squeezed firmly shut.

Judy had expected a bridge to simply start growing out from the eroded edge of the tunnel, but that wasn't what happened. Instead, what seemed like thousands of black filaments, no wider than a spider's web, sprouted from it, growing longer and longer as they did. They waved crazily in air currents Judy had barely felt, the incredibly fine lines vanishing from view as they grew ever longer. After perhaps fifteen minutes of this, the only sound Nick made his steady breathing, the filaments suddenly burst with light, drawing patterns through the air like bolts of lightning and sharply illuminating the gorge and waterfall.

As Judy threw up a paw to cover her dazzled eyes, the light faded out nearly as quickly as it had appeared, but Judy could still see the afterimages of the threads burning in her field of view. She wasn't sure how many there had been total—it seemed like at least ten thousand—or how many had successfully crossed the gap. It seemed like most of the threads had become interwoven, or simply drooped downwards, but a dozen or more had anchored themselves against the far wall.

Nick opened his eyes, his chest heaving with exertion, and caught sight of Judy blinking out the remnants of the light show. "I should have warned you not to look," he managed to say between deep panting breaths, falling over onto his side.

"I should have remembered," Judy replied, feeling somewhat chagrined; she had seen him perform alchemy frequently enough to know that whatever he transmuted would burn briefly and intensely with its own light, "How do you feel?"

"Wishing I had some of my philosopher's stones left, to be honest," he said.

Judy knelt beside him, rubbing a paw across his shoulder. He looked weak and used up, his eyes blearily regarding her. She felt a pang of guilt, knowing that he could have at least eased his own pain if he hadn't used all of his stones to heal her. "I can't thank you enough for saving me," she said, and Nick managed a weak laugh.

"Maybe not, but I wouldn't mind if you tried," Nick said.

Judy gave him a quick peck, kissing him between his ears, and Nick slowly rolled from his side onto his back when she pulled her head back. "I can't say you're not grateful," he said at last, "Just give me a few minutes."

When ten minutes had passed, he forced himself to his knees and carefully drew another series of patterns across the drawing he had already made. When he applied effort again, Judy couldn't help but look despite knowing that she'd be blinking spots out of her eyes for minutes afterwards. Connections began growing between the filaments as they thickened, and the resemblance to a spider's web became truly uncanny before it started looking more like a bridge. A somewhat twisted bridge with an incredible number of dangling supports that looked as though it had grown naturally more than that it had been built. It was, to be perfectly honest, quite ugly, but it did seem to span the entire gap.

As soon as he was done, while Judy's vision was still full of painfully bright lines, Nick collapsed. "Nick!" Judy shouted, and her heart was in her throat as she rushed over to him.

Some part of her was convinced that he had been lying, that creating a bridge while already exhausted would be enough to kill him, and for a moment Judy couldn't feel the beat of his heart. But then one of his paws lifted and brushed feebly against her. "S'fine," he murmured as Judy lifted his head into her lap, "Just need a few..."

He trailed off, and his breathing became more regular. He had apparently passed out. Judy wasn't sure how long she sat there, cradling his head, and feeling relief wash over her as he continued to breath. She stroked at the fur of his head, marveling at how peaceful he seemed when at rest and enjoying the sensation of simply touching him. As she ran the fingers of her left paw through his fur, she paid closer attention to her altered fingers. There was a small scar on her thumb, shaped a bit like a ragged letter "c," and she supposed it was a perfect replica of a scar Nick had at a slightly smaller scale. A quick check of his own paw, which felt quite warm in her own, confirmed that she was right. Judy wondered how he had gotten his, and what it meant for her that she had its twin. Before she could think about it too deeply, though, her thoughts turned again to Cencerro and whatever he had been planning.

She still had no satisfying answers to her questions, although she hoped that Captain General Bogo would find what little she did have useful. Judy sincerely hoped that he would, at least; the idea of him being either involved in Cencerro's plot or simply incapable of figuring out the solution refused to fit how she saw the world. And yet, she had already seen plenty of proof that things weren't quite as black and white as she had once thought. A seemingly loyal and decorated member of the City Guard had tried killing her, and had done _something_ to the entire population of Phoenix to make them vanish even if she didn't know what it was. Vanish just as an army had shown up...

When Nick finally awakened, Judy could barely contain her excitement at sharing her new theory, but she did her best. He was still obviously weak, and no matter how exciting her idea was her concern for him was too great to ignore. If anything, though, his exhaustion (and what was, he assured her, the worst headache he had ever had) seemed to dull his fear of heights, although he had crawled across the bridge with his eyes screwed shut and his body trembling. She supposed he had simply been too tired to be afraid, and once he was across Judy positioned herself under his arm and let him use her as a crutch.

When he had finally recovered enough that it seemed he might be capable of actually listening to her, Judy asked the question that had been turning over in her mind for what felt like hours. "What if the reason everyone in Phoenix disappeared right as an army showed up is because they _are_ the army?" she asked.

Nick had blinked wearily at her for a moment before speaking. "So everyone in Phoenix really _was_ out to get me?" he asked, "How could Cencerro make everyone play along?"

"Isn't there some kind of blood magic or alchemy or, I don't know, some kind of artifact from Quimichpatlan Barony that—"

Nick cut her off with an exhausted shake of his head that made his head brush up against hers. "Mind control, you mean," he said.

"Yes, exactly!" Judy said triumphantly, glad that even as tired as he was he got her point, "Is it possible?"

"No idea," Nick said, "But it's a thought."

Judy tried to rein in her disappointment, but she must not have been successful because Nick observed, "Your ears are drooping again."

"I just really want to figure it out," Judy said softly, and Nick nodded again.

"I know," he said, "But let's get out of here first."

Although Judy would have loved to have picked his brain further for ideas, she let the topic drop and continued to support Nick as he guided them through the tunnels on the opposite side of the gorge. It occurred to her that while they might still be in the ruins of Quimichpatlan Barony, they had left behind the borders of Phoenix, and it was a strange thought. They had successfully escaped the settlement; now all they had to do was reach the surface.

That took several more hours, and it was only with ever more effort that Judy didn't say anything. Nick was clearly too exhausted to manage a conversation, and so Judy kept trying to figure out patterns in her own mind. It didn't quite seem fair; she had lost an arm and was already feeling more or less normal, while he hadn't suffered any injuries at all and was obviously in far more miserable shape. Eventually, though, Nick brought them to a shaft about ten feet wide with a spiraling staircase circling it. It was dusty and had a disused air to it, but it seemed to be entirely intact. Nick groaned when he saw it, though, speaking for the first time in hours. "I was hoping for a lift," he said with a sigh, "This is going to take me a while."

"I'm here for however long it takes," Judy replied, and she was as good as her word.

It wasn't easy, making her way up the stairs with Nick leaning so heavily against her, and the stairs themselves seemed to spiral endlessly upwards. At long last, they came to a hatch and Judy threw herself at it, pushing as hard as she could. For a moment, she thought that it might not open, that Nick would either have to transmute an opening or that they'd have to walk all the way back down and find another way out. But the hatch did give way, showering the two of them with dirt and fine pebbles. The sunlight was just as dazzling as the light of Nick's alchemy after so much time underground, and Judy squinted as she pulled herself out onto the pock-marked and barren ground of the wastelands. Looking down at Nick, the natural light made him appear more ragged and frail than the glare of an alchemical torch. His fur was matted with dirt and cobwebs, and the weariness in his eyes appeared even more pronounced. Despite it all, though, Judy thought he was more handsome than he had ever been.

"Come on," Judy said, "I'll pull you up."

Nick reached up, Judy grabbing his paw and pulling him into the light of day.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Judy dropped her spear to draw her sword when fighting the monsters back in chapter 31, and I figured that it made sense that Nick wouldn't have bothered to pick it up when he was carrying her.

Foxes are indeed omnivores, rather than obligate carnivores like some predators. Then again, considering that Judy's insides are a blend of rabbit and fox at this point, her dietary needs might not be quite as simple as Nick suggests; he's certainly not a doctor.

Hardtack has been made for hundreds of years, particularly for use by soldiers and sailors as cheap and relatively non-perishable calories. In the real world, hardtack was sometimes stamped with identifying information before it was baked, as it was here.

Sakatl's name is derived from the Nahuatl word for "grass," which seemed appropriate as a surname for an herbivore. Male deer do indeed shed their antlers every year, but whether that's something that would actually make a sentient deer moody is beyond me. It certainly seems like the sort of gossip that might be a self-fulfilling prophecy, though; if people treat you differently because they expect you to be acting in a certain way, it might irritate you enough to make you act that way.

The bridge Nick builds starts with one of the applications modern science would find quite difficult but alchemy as described here would have better luck with. Carbon nanotubes, although a frequently mentioned material in modern science fiction, are a real material with incredible properties, including fantastic strength. Creating usable lengths of nanotubes is a tremendous challenge, but if you could create lengths of arbitrary size you could do a lot with them.

Otherwise, I don't have too much to say about this chapter. I do hope you enjoyed it, and if you're so inclined as to leave a comment I'd love to know what you thought!


	38. Chapter 38

_Unprecedented problems require unprecedented solutions._

Bogo rolled the words around in his mind. There were dozens of things that mammals had said that had stuck in his memory for whatever reason, going back to even before he took the oath that had made him a member of a City Guard. His predecessor as Captain General had been a veritable font of wisdom, and he could remember her way with words even years later. But the latest phrase to catch in his mind was far more recent than any of the others, and it had come from an almost unlikely source.

They were the princess's words, spoken not even half an hour earlier, and they were perhaps the surest sign he had ever seen that she would one day be ready to be queen. It was the first comforting thought he had held in quite some time, and he tried to hold onto the feeling as his army advanced across the wastelands, the syncopated steps of mammals who varied wildly in size providing a beat that was the only thing that could be heard.

The princess's counsel had been drawn in when one of the strangest-looking messengers Bogo had ever seen had swooped over the marching army not even ten minutes after they had left the War Gate and crossed into the wasteland. Just about every messenger bird Bogo had ever seen was a hawk or an eagle, or somewhat more rarely an owl. But the bird that had descended for him was a swift, one that Bogo assumed at first was a wild bird that saw the marching army as potential food source. Until, that was, the bird landed on his arm and he saw the tiniest shrew he had ever seen perched on the bird's back and holding its reins.

"You didn't make yourself easy to find," the shrew said without preamble, its voice high but unmistakably masculine, "Report for you, Lord Bogo."

Rather than getting his message then and there, Bogo had carried the bird and shrew, which together formed an almost imperceptible weight on his hoof, to the carriage that had been assembled for the queen, the princess, and their advisers. Considering that none of them was a soldier, Bogo doubted any of them, except perhaps Corazón, would have been up for marching to Phoenix. The carriage itself was fairly spacious, as even with Bogo sitting on one of the two overly plush bench seats that faced each other no one was quite touching elbows. The messenger had landed his bird on the table set at the center of the carriage, seeming to ignore the elaborate map of Zootopia that had already been there. When the tiny shrew caught sight of the queen and princess, his entire demeanor changed from visible annoyance at Bogo to almost overblown respect. He almost tripped over his feet in his hurry to bow, although that might also have been an effect of the rocking of the carriage, and introduced himself without daring to look either the queen or the princess in the face. "I am Middle of the Juan—I mean, Juan of the Middle Baronies, your majesties, and this is my partner Mitotiqui," he had said, and he did something with the reins held in one minuscule paw that made the bird do a surprisingly good imitation of a bow.

The shrew was dressed largely as Camoti had been, although he was so small that his clothes were difficult to see; without his glasses Bogo could barely make him out. His species was easily the smallest Bogo had ever encountered, as even the diminutive crime lord Alfonso would have towered over him, but they had vaguely similar snouts. Juan was also completely ignoring the other members of the Queen's Council, which Bogo didn't mind, although Lady Cencerro had a vaguely put-upon expression on her face at the snub. Juan was still bowing, and Bogo realized that the shrew probably didn't know what to do next; most mammals would never get the chance to see royalty up close, let alone to speak with them. "He was hired to travel to Phoenix and report back after we lost contact with the settlement," Bogo interjected hastily, "Your report, if you would."

Juan straightened up, tugging at his riding clothes anxiously. "The report, the report, of course," he said.

His voice was shaky with what was obviously nerves; he had none of the smooth charm of his fellow messenger. "I, ah, that is—"

"What did you see?" Lady Cencerro interrupted.

She was sitting behind the shrew's back, and he spun around before dipping in an awkward half bow. "Time is of the essence, is it not Captain General?" she said, with a sweetness to her voice that didn't extend to her face, "Anything you could tell us would be most helpful."

It was actually rather remarkable, when Bogo thought about it, that Lady Cencerro could manage to make such flattering words in such a gentle voice sound almost like a threat. "Of course!" Juan said, and he spun back around to face the queen and princess.

"There's an army outside Phoenix, just past the bridge. But not really. Because the bridge isn't there anymore, I mean, not that there _isn't_ an army. Because there is. An army, not a bridge. In the wastelands, not Phoenix," the shrew said, and his words were coming out as quickly as water rushing over the edge of an aqueduct.

"Few thousand mammals, I'd say. All different sizes, too. Like... city guards. Not _the_ City Guard, I mean, but like they were guarding Phoenix, and they all had uniforms too, but not like guard uniforms. They had banners, with this odd symbol, kind of like a... Like a..."

Juan's paws groped the air as he seemed to search for and fail at describing the symbol he had seen. Before anyone could prompt him to ask if it had been the sigil of the Betrayer, he seemed to pull something from a pouch at his waist (or at least Bogo assumed he had; his belt was too small to see) and fell to his knees. Without so much as asking first if he could draw on the richly made map, he drew a symbol nearly half as large as he was, which made it all but illegible to Bogo.

From the way he saw the heads of the other members of the council nod, though, Bogo assumed two things: that it was indeed Oztoyehuatl the Betrayer's personal symbol, and that Juan must have been a somewhat lackluster student in his younger days not to know that. From Corazón's response, he knew he was right on at least one count; the lion said, "So your cousin was telling the truth, Lady Cencerro."

"What about Phoenix itself?" the queen asked, apparently ignoring Corazón's petty swipe at Cencerro, "What did you see?"

"Ah, well, to tell the truth, your highness," Juan stammered, his entire body trembling, "I didn't see much. The mammals outside the city started shooting arrows at poor Mitotiqui here. We—that is, I mean, I—didn't think... That is, I didn't think it was safe to get lower. For a better view, I mean. But give the word, your highness, and I'll get close enough to see the whites of their eyes, I swear it."

The shrew had undergone a remarkable transformation as he spoke; as he pledged himself to make what sounded like it could be a doomed reconnaissance run, his voice had strengthened, and while he still spoke to the queen bowed low, some steel seemed to have come into his spine and his trembling stopped. But Bogo was more interested in what the messenger had confirmed, and especially in the new information he had learned. So far, everything Juan had said matched up perfectly with Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro's testimony; if it hadn't Bogo's next stop would have been over to the significantly smaller and less luxurious carriage in which the sheep was riding to engage in some significantly more intense questioning.

That the mammals holding Phoenix had archers was of particular interest to Bogo, considering he was almost certainly have to fight those mammals, and he asked the question that would help him most. "How many archers? How many arrows loose at one time?"

"Two or three dozen," Juan replied almost instantly, and he must have misread Bogo's frown of concentration because he quickly added, "I know I could get past them if I needed to, Lord Bogo."

Bogo grunted his acknowledgement, still thinking. He wasn't an expert at flight by any means, but he supposed it was true enough; if the army surrounding Phoenix really had destroyed the bridge into the settlement, it'd be safe enough inside of Phoenix. Unless, of course, they had worked their way through the tunnels in the ruins Phoenix was built on top of like termites in a rotting piece of wood.

Still, for an army of that size, it was a surprisingly low number of archers, but Bogo refused to let himself feel optimistic about his odds of success. As long as he had no idea what other surprises might await in Phoenix he wouldn't delude himself into thinking it would be easy. "That certainly sounds encouraging for our attack," Cerdo said brightly, appearing to be thinking along entirely opposite lines, "With their backs to the gorge, they don't stand a chance."

It was, Bogo had to admit, a reasonable tactical assessment. For an army to position themselves like that was foolish at best; they'd have no way to retreat and even the most incompetent lieutenant in all the City Guard would be able to set up a charge that would inflict massive casualties. "It might be a trap," the princess countered.

Her voice was quiet but firm, and Bogo's thoughts drew back to watching her practice with a sword. Assuming he could keep her safe, which was admittedly quite an assumption, she'd be an adult soon, and it was obvious that in many ways she had already begun to think like one. The queen nodded, and Bogo thought he saw both approval and acknowledgement of her daughter's contribution in the gesture. "We'll need more information," Queen Lana said, "I will not spend a single soldier's life needlessly."

"Absolutely, your highness, I'll be off at once," Juan replied eagerly.

He was fumbling with his bird's reins, not that Mitotiqui seemed to mind. He—or she, since Juan had never specified and Bogo didn't know how to tell the difference for a swift—was about the calmest bird Bogo had ever seen, particularly in contrast to Juan. "No, not yet," the princess said, lifting a single paw, "Juan of the Middle Baronies, how have you been paid for the work you've already done for the City Guard?"

The shrew was completely lost for words for a moment. "By contract, that is, same as any other client, your highness."

"And that contract only covered the delivery of a single scouting report to Lord Bogo, did it not?" the princess pressed on.

"It did, it did," Juan said, "But it's no trouble, no trouble at all for me to go again, your highness, I—"

"Juan of the Middle Baronies," the princess interrupted, "You were prepared to risk your life for a job you haven't even signed a contract to ensure payment for. Why?"

"It— It's the right thing to do, your highness," Juan said at last, "Anything for you or the kingdom."

The princess nodded. "Do you have a family, Juan of the Middle Baronies? A wife or any children?"

"Ah, well, not yet your highness, not yet, but I am to be married," Juan said, "Six months it is, we've been promised to each other. Long enough, she's been telling me."

The poor shrew sounded nearly as confused as Bogo felt, finishing his words with a nervous chuckle. He wasn't entirely sure what the princess was getting at, but when she spoke again she had the same calm authority her mother exuded. "Without a contract, there is no guarantee that you'll get paid," the princess said.

Bogo thought he saw Juan's tiny mouth open and close soundlessly, the shrew probably torn between vigorous denial and not wanting to interrupt. "And should you die, on this potentially dangerous scouting mission, there's no guarantee your betrothed would receive any compensation," the princess continued, "Whereas any single one of the mammals in the City Guard, should they die retaking Phoenix from the barbarians who attacked it, would leave behind some assistance to their families."

"Oh, well, I have a contract here," Juan said patting frenetically at his torso before pulling out a piece of folded up paper so tiny that whatever text was on it made the page look gray, "If you want to sign a contract, your highness."

"Not quite," the princess said, "You have a noble spirit, Juan of the Middle Baronies, to be willing to sacrifice for your city, but it is not right for me to demand that sacrifice of you without reward or protection. I ask you to take the oath of the City Guard."

Juan's answer—an enthusiastic "Yes, your highness," was nearly lost in the shocked reactions of Lord Cerdo and Lady Cencerro.

Both the pig and the sheep were obviously shocked, but when Bogo looked to the silent Lord Corazón he saw a look of satisfaction cross the lion's face. "Your highness, it _is_ very unusual," Cerdo began in a somewhat hectoring tone, "Surely the contract, with appropriate bonus pay, would be sufficient?"

"Do you really mean to have him sworn in?" Cencerro asked, "It's unprecedented."

Bogo wasn't sure how much of her reaction was surprise and how much of it was the political maneuvering of realizing that the princess had just given Corazón a very clear sign of approval when it came to his proposals. "Unprecedented problems require unprecedented solutions," the princess had replied, and that had been that.

Bogo had administered the oath himself, swearing Juan in as a sergeant before the little shrew flew off to do more reconnaissance.

For his part, Bogo had excused himself soon afterwards, claiming to want to get an update on the army's status. Of course, his real reason for doing so was to consider what the princess had said, the words lodged in his brain like a splinter. _Unprecedented problems require unprecedented solutions._

Even as Bogo checked in with every column of his force as it kicked up dust along the one road between Zootopia and Phoenix, he couldn't escape the words. Perhaps Corazón had been right all along; was Bogo desperately clinging to tradition in a way that ensured he would lose? The entire campaign he was embarking on had that sort of feeling to it, that everything would have been so much easier if something—tradition, momentum, whatever you wanted to call it—hadn't pulled events along tired old lines. There was no good reason a better and faster route to Phoenix couldn't have been built decades ago, but the political motivation had never been there. There was no reason that the Outer Wall couldn't have been fixed where it was breached near Phoenix, but it was said to be too expensive and there was nothing out past it. Everything his enemy had taken advantage of was something Zootopia's defenders had considered unimportant. And now he had come dangerously close to denying his army information it desperately needed just because the source of that information was a shrew.

It would have been easy to have interjected into the princess's conversation with the messenger, to offer a generous contract once again, and handle messengers the way they had always been treated. Not as a part of the City Guard, but as a lesser tool. A sort of mercenary one, a necessary evil. But by enlisting Juan, the princess had secured what seemed to be exceptional loyalty at a far lower cost than yet another expensive contract.

And Juan was only the first of what could be many. Bogo could imagine a much larger force, an entire new branch of the City Guard, and what it could be used for. It'd be expensive, of course, building up a viable force, but that was the only halfway reasonable counterargument he could think of. Besides, maybe if he started admitting shrews and mice to serve as bird-mounted scouts and messengers—and Gods, maybe even bats no matter how much slower they were—Corazón might stop pushing as hard for rabbits and other small mammals to go through the academy. But then, maybe he had been wrong there, too. If Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro had been telling the truth, Ensign Totchli had died a hero despite being a bunny and a loner while at the academy. Perhaps, as unlikely as it seemed, there were more bunnies like her out there.

Blindly following tradition wouldn't be what saved Zootopia, if there was anything that _could_ save the city. He still had a horrible feeling that there was something he was overlooking, but he couldn't say what it was. Although they still weren't very far into their trip, none of the other members of the Queen's Council had taken the initiative to try murdering the queen or princess—which was a small favor, he supposed—but Bogo still had the nagging feeling that he had missed something important, his mind continuously circling back to the thought.

Just as Bogo was about to head back to the royal carriage, he was caught by a scout. A traditional scout, that was, not one of his new Aerial Guards or whatever term he ended up settling on. She was a slim young springbok, wearing the lightweight and totally unarmored uniform of a high-speed scout, with a belt of quauhxicallis all designed to improve her already impressive running speed. "Sir," she said, barely panting in an impressive display of endurance as expected of a scout that ranged far ahead of the army, "Two mammals approaching, about half a day's march away. A fox and a rabbit."

"A fox and a rabbit," Bogo repeated, and his blood began to run cold, "Was the rabbit wearing a City Guard uniform?"

"Yessir," the springbok replied; if she was surprised or impressed that he had known that, it didn't show on her face, "Her armor looked a bit battered and dirty, but I'd swear she's City Guard."

Bogo frowned. As he saw it, there were only two real possibilities. Either Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro had been lying about Ensign Totchli's death or the barbarians had a rabbit who was wearing her armor. Looking at those options, he knew what his next move had to be. "Put together a small force, lieutenant, three mammals and yourself," he said, "Bring the two of them in. And be careful. The fox might be an alchemist."

The springbok's composure broke ever so slightly at that; one of her eyebrows twitched upwards towards her curving horns. "Yessir," she said, "Should we ask them politely first?"

Bogo nodded. "At first," he said, "If they won't come along, do what you have to."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Way back in chapter 22, Bogo did order that a messenger be dispatched to Phoenix to investigate what was going on the instant he received word that communication had been cut off. Here, that messenger finally catches up with him; to be fair Bogo did leave what could reasonably be assumed to be the location where a report should be made.

The common swift is indeed a small bird compared to most birds of prey or owls, but they are remarkable fliers; a swift can stay airborne for ten months at a time. That's not a typo on my part; swifts really can go almost an entire year without ever landing. They're also the sixth-fastest known bird in flight, capable of reaching speeds of 111.6 kph (69.3 mph) in horizontal flight. As such, it shouldn't be too surprising that the bird shares its name with a word for doing something fast!

The shrew riding the swift is an Etruscan shrew, not an Arctic shrew like Mr. Big or Fru-Fru, which has the distinction of being the smallest living mammal by mass, averaging just 1.8 grams (0.063 ounces). Considering the small size of a swift, the rider has to be pretty small to not be overly burdensome for the bird. The word "mitotiqui" comes from a Nahuatl word that refers to a kind of dance, but in modern Mexican Spanish is the root for "mitote," a word that can also mean to create an uproar or a disturbance. There have been several birds in this story now, all with names in Nahuatl; I figure that it's seen as an appropriate naming convention in-universe, in much the same way that there are some names you'd give a dog but not a person.

The rank of sergeant is at about the middle of the Spanish Army's enlisted ranks; Juan is not an officer as Judy is.

Bogo is both right and wrong when he thinks that bats are slower than birds. Birds generally can fly faster than bats, but the Brazilian free-tail bat can hit 160 kph (100 mph) in level flight in brief bursts, making it faster than any bird although it's average speed is lower. While the peregrine falcon can indeed _move_ faster, that's only in dives, not in horizontal flight.

Springboks are one of the world's fastest land animals; although not as fast as a cheetah they are often successful at escaping cheetahs when hunted. I figured it also made sense for scouts to have a lighter uniform than the rest of the City Guard; anything to make it easier for them to go faster.

As always, thanks for reading! I hope you'll enjoy seeing what comes next!


	39. Chapter 39

Judy's arm itched and there was nothing she could do about it.

It was a terribly trivial thing to think about—she was also tired and hungry, and that was leaving aside her concern about Nick—but somehow the too-tight bandages wrapping her altered arm wouldn't leave her mind. But then, thinking was about all she could do while waiting to be delivered to the City Guard.

"Delivered" seemed to be the word that fit best, too; she was no longer walking under her own power, but was instead securely harnessed to the back of one of the four mammals who had ordered her and Nick to go with them. The harness she was fastened into might have been designed for her own safety, as the calm springbok who seemed to be in charge of the other three mammals—a gazelle and two cheetahs who looked so similar that they might have been twins—had said. But it also worked quite well as a restraint, and Judy couldn't so much as move an inch as she watched Phoenix grow ever smaller and smaller.

Judy didn't quite feel like a prisoner, but she wondered if that would have been different if she and Nick had refused to go along with the four mammals who claimed to be scouts from the City Guard. Not that they would have been in much shape to resist, of course. With her own bag lost in the ruins under Phoenix, the only supplies they had carried had been what was in Nick's bag, and those hadn't been nearly enough. Nick had demonstrated his ability to transmute rocks into perfect copies of what little food they did have remaining, as well as fresh water to replace his nearly empty canteen, but Judy had seen the effort it cost him. Even days after healing her arm, he was still obviously exhausted, and a certain hollowness had come into his features that she didn't like the look of.

It had meant that they couldn't travel nearly as fast as they had on their way to Phoenix, which in turn meant that the meager amount of food which might have been just barely enough at a faster pace was completely insufficient when traveling slowly enough for Nick to keep up. Even when Judy insisted on carrying his bag, which felt as though it weighed about as much as she did, he tired easily. On their first night back under the sky he had fallen asleep mid-conversation, and when it had come to be his turn to keep watch for anyone from the army surrounding Phoenix chasing after them he had fallen asleep again.

It had occurred to Judy part of the way through the second day that they had switched positions from when Nick had been trying to save her life; she found herself telling him long and rambling stories of her days as a kit in Totchli Barony just to give him something to focus on. If it had bothered Nick when she diverted into tangents as she tried to remember complex family trees and which cousins had been part of a particular story he hadn't given any indication of it; his responses had tended to be no more than a word or two.

He had given her an explanation, though, one that made a certain kind of sense even though she suspected he was glossing over a number of details. "It's like a rain barrel," he had said the first night, holding her close with one paw and vaguely patting at the air with the other, "Use too much water and you have to wait for it to fill up again."

"What does alchemy use?" Judy had asked, both because she was curious and because she wanted to keep him talking.

Nick had shrugged expansively, his tail curling around her as he yawned widely. "Every mammal has it. A gift from the gods, some say," he had said at last.

"Your soul?" Judy had suggested, rather tentatively.

The idea that Nick was somehow spending the everlasting portion of his being to change rocks into food was more frightening than the idea that it cost him physical effort. What would happen if he pushed too hard while his mysterious reserves were too empty? Would it kill him? Or, worse, would it leave his body alive but without the spark that made him who he was, still breathing but motionless?

"If you want to call it that," had been Nick's answer, and he had fallen asleep almost the instant after speaking the words.

Judy had set the conversation aside, although her mind kept running back to it, especially when four figures had appeared as dark spots over the horizon, clearly coming toward them from the direction of the heart of Zootopia. It seemed possible that if Cencerro had allies in the city-state itself, he could have sent them out to ensure that his version of the story of what happened in Phoenix was the only one that anyone heard. Nick had seen the figures a moment after her—which was in itself somewhat troubling, considering how sharp his eyes were—and had collapsed to his knees, gesturing for Judy to let him rummage through his pack. "We have to cover your arm," he said, pulling a roll of bandages out.

Judy had wanted to protest, but she saw his point after a moment. Her uniform tunic was ruined, the left sleeve completely gone, and without her own pack she had no spares, which meant that her altered arm stood out spectacularly. "Easier if there's one less thing to explain," Nick had said, seeing the expression crossing her face, and then he had slumped onto his back.

"I really hope they don't want to fight," he had said with a sigh as Judy had wrapped bandages around her arm, "But I think the gods enjoy laughing at me."

There had been a touch of his normal put-upon cynical air to the words, and Judy had been glad at even the small sign of recovery. If it did come to a fight, she got the feeling that he would be of no help whatsoever, and she wasn't so arrogant as to think that graduating at the top of her class meant that she could take on four mammals with no trouble. Especially once the figures in the distance resolved themselves into mammals wearing the uniforms of City Guard scouts, the thin red tunics woven with a pattern that approximated the quilting of her own much thicker uniform top.

All four mammals had moved with the incredible speed and stamina that could only come from quauhxicallis, which Judy had chosen to be cautiously optimistic about. It certainly suggested that they were members of the City Guard, which sounded promising except when Judy remembered that Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro had been as well. The leader of the group, who had introduced herself as Lieutenant Del Oro. She hadn't bothered to give her first name or introduce her team, and her bluntness had continued with her line of questioning. "Are you Judy of Totchli Barony?" she had asked.

Judy had to resist the urge to frown before answering that she was; it was perhaps not a good sign that her rank hadn't been included. "Are you Nicholas of the Middle Baronies?" Del Oro had subsequently asked Nick, her attention turning away from Judy so completely that it was as though she had forgotten she existed.

If the springbok found it odd that Nick was flat on his back with his eyes half-closed, she didn't say anything. Nick had simply nodded, idly waving one paw. "I have orders to bring you back to Captain General Bogo," Del Oro had continued, "You will surrender any and all weapons on you and comply."

Mercifully, Nick hadn't piped up to say something that could have escalated the situation, like asking what would have happened if they didn't. Frankly, Judy was curious as to the answer herself, but Nick had given up a small dagger Judy had never seen him use and she gave up her sword. That, at least, had finally caused a crack in the professionalism of the springbok; Del Oro had raised an eyebrow at seeing the finely made sabre, and the gazelle had whistled appreciatively as he collected it. "Getting a head start on captain, are you?" he had asked, sliding the sabre a few inches out of its sheath to admire the wickedly sharp edge.

"Odd pommel, though," he had added as he inspected the miniature golden replica of Nick's head.

"That's enough," Del Oro had replied sharply to the gazelle, even as Judy felt her ears burning.

It certainly hadn't been her intent to put on airs by carrying the sword Nick had made her, but he had been in no shape to make her a replacement spear for the last few days. Worse, she wasn't sure what the scouts were reading into the sword. It'd be bad enough if they thought that she was one of those officers who broke traditions and rules alike, particularly considering that she needed to convince Captain General Bogo of the threat that Cencerro posed. But what if they thought that there was something suspicious on the basis of her relationship with Nick?

The springbok had turned back to Judy, fixing her in a level stare. "How bad is your injury?" she had asked, gesturing at Judy's arm.

Normally, such a question would have betrayed at least a little bit of concern, or at the very least a sort of false interest. Del Oro had sounded more as though she was trying to determine the solution to a puzzle, as though her only concern was in whether it would make her job more or less difficult.

"It's— It's not life-threatening," Judy had managed, clutching at her left arm with her right, "I got hurt in the ruins."

Del Oro had made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat. "And what about you, fox?"

"Just tired," Nick had replied, lifting one paw in a lazy wave before letting it fall to the ground again.

He hadn't moved at all from his position on the ground, and Del Oro turned away. Each officer carried a small pack, and when Del Oro began digging through her own the others followed suit. "Lieutenant Del Oro," Judy began, "I'd like to—"

She hadn't been sure exactly what she was going to say, just that she wanted to know more about what Del Oro knew. "I'd like you to make my job easier," the springbok had interrupted, her tone politely neutral even though her words weren't, "We're getting the two of you back to the captain general as soon as possible."

Shortly thereafter, Judy had suffered the indignity of being strapped to the back of one of the cheetahs, with Nick on the other and his bag on the back of the gazelle. And with that, she was stuck watching the landscape bounce by at high speed as the woven straps dug into her thighs and elbows. And as the bandages covering her left arm made it itch terribly.

Judy resisted the urge to sigh; the harness was so tight that it would have been more than a little unpleasant. There was no point in trying to talk, either; when she had tried, the cheetah had simply ignored her question. That might have been because of Lieutenant Del Oro, who seemed to be keeping an eye on the other officers, alternating between running ahead and behind as part of a constantly shifting pattern. When one of those shifts let Judy move her neck—which seemed to be about the only part of her body she _could_ move—she had caught a glimpse of Nick. He was asleep, which was more than a little impressive considering how rough a ride being strapped to the back of a mammal moving at incredible speed was.

Her only option, then, as she tried to ignore the itching in her arm, was to think. Del Oro had known her name and Nick's name, which seemed to suggest something, but she was at a loss for what it was. _She said Captain General Bogo sent her to get us. You really do have friends in high places, don't you?_ Nick's voice asked in her mind. Judy knew that it wasn't really Nick, but there was something comforting in imagining his words as though she could actually speak to him rather than just occasionally catching a glimpse of his nodding head or limp tail. _Very sweet, Carrots. But you're thinking about the mystery, because of course you are. Can't waste any time fantasizing about me?_

Judy frowned, feeling a blush creep up her ears as an image of Nick in all his glory crept into her mind. She wasn't sure what it said about her imagination that it was teasing her in the voice of her— _lover, of course_ , Nick's voice seemed to interject into her thoughts. _I do hope that's what you were going to think next._

The image of his face, his eyes sparkling with mischievous delight as a slow smile crossed his muzzle, seemed so vivid that it was as though he was somehow floating next to her and not lashed to the back of a rapidly running cheetah. _Once I can keep my head upright, I promise to show you what that means. And to mock those ridiculous stories you told me about your misspent youth, but there_ are _priorities._

"And right now mine is figuring out what's going on," Judy said, speaking the words out loud before she even realized that was what she was going to do.

Excepting the time she had been dying of Ehetcatl venom, Judy had never imagined someone so vividly, and that had been with Nick actually telling her a story and her mind filling in the gaps. Her imagined Nick was somehow just as real, and speaking to him had seemed so natural that the words had just slipped out. The cheetah who was carrying her was still pointedly ignoring Judy, which was just as well because she doubted she could explain herself. _Yes, yes, and you need a clever fox to help with that. Now, how does Bogo know who we are? I've never met him, and somehow I doubt you have either._

Judy wasn't sure whether or not what Nick—or at least, the Nick her imagination conjured up—had said was true for him, but it was certainly true for her. Her rank and assignment were both too low to have ever met the mammal responsible for all of Zootopia's City Guard, but everything flowed upward in the City Guard. Someone had signed off on her assignment to escort Nick, and someone had signed off on that, and so on and so on, until it likely made its way into something less than a line item on a report that hit Bogo's desk. _Sad to see your life reduced to that_ , Nick replied agreeably, _But I think you're right. He knows who we are because he_ wanted _to know who we are. I doubt he remembers everything that crosses his desk. Or maybe he does and that's how he got the job._

Judy ignored the flippant remark—which her own mind had been the source of—and tried to run through the implication of it. If Bogo had bothered to find out who the two of them were, that meant that he had some reason to suspect that things weren't going right in Phoenix. And the reason for that would likely be— _Birds,_ Nick's voice interrupted her thoughts, _Just like the name of the settlement. Little on the nose, don't you think?_

"I _knew_ that," Judy muttered despite herself.

 _No, I think I'll take the credit for that one_. Even in her mind, his words were smug. No class Judy had ever taken at the academy had suggested imagining a partner to work through a mystery, or what it meant when you started getting annoyed at that imagined partner for giving answers before you had the chance to consciously think of them yourself. Maybe that you were going a little crazy with nothing else to do. _I hope you can live with that_ , Nick's voice came again, the shrug somehow evident in it, _But back to your mystery. Birds._

When Phoenix had been taken over, it certainly meant that any communication between the settlement and the rest of Zootopia had stopped. Judy knew that Fermina or Fernanda or whatever she wanted to call the shrew must have been one of the last ones out of Phoenix, which suggested that Cencerro hadn't stopped communication out of Phoenix before his coup or whatever it was he had done.

 _So someone on the City Guard actually does their job and notices that there haven't been messages between Phoenix and Zootopia for a while. How long does that take? A day? Two?_

Judy didn't know the answer, but she supposed one day would be the absolute minimum. _And then we spend some time in jail before I cleverly make a way out, lose even more time in the ruins before I cleverly give you a new arm and build a bridge—either one of which I'd love to see anyone else match—and then a few days staggering back toward Zootopia before this bunch picks us up._ Judy wasn't sure exactly how much time they had lost, but she saw what the inevitable conclusion was.

Bogo must have sent mammals to investigate Phoenix very soon after the city went dark, and he had done enough research to know that the two of them were among the last mammals to enter the settlement. And that he had bothered to do so, in the middle of investigating an attempt on the princess's life, suggested that the two events might be connected.

 _Or that Bogo can focus on more than one thing at a time_ , Nick's voice countered cheerfully. Judy thought it was too coincidental for the events to be unrelated, and in her imagination Nick nodded slowly, stroking at his muzzle.

 _How far can these scouts go, anyway? The quauhxicallis must cost a fortune._

Nick—or at least, Judy's imagination—had a point there. Every fifteen minutes or so, by Judy's best estimate, the scouts would pull a vial off a belt at their waist, down the contents, and throw the empty vial away with an impressive smoothness. For four mammals, that was a lot of _quauhxicallis_ _._ _I'd probably cough up a lung if I tried drinking and running at the same time._

Judy smiled a bit at the thought of it; in her imagination the red of a scout uniform somehow complemented the red-orange of Nick's fur. Without a heavy breastplate like the standard guard uniform, it would really emphasize the lean strength to his arms and torso and— _Now who's being a distraction?_

Judy did the rough mental math as well as she could, based on her estimate of how many quauhxicallis each scout had been carrying when they arrived and what she thought the standard number of spares to carry would be. Her best guess was somewhere just outside the Middle Wall, and in her head Nick nodded his approval. _So is Bogo at the Middle Wall, or is that just where the order came from?_

The only answer she could think of was that either Bogo would be near the Middle Wall or they would stop there to resupply for a trip further into the city. But if Bogo knew about the barbarians at the Outer Wall, would he really wait patiently at the Middle Wall? _You tell me, Carrots._

Judy suspected that the answer was a firm no. He'd be leading an army, which Cencerro would definitely know. Was it a trap, then? _Well, that's one possibility. But what about that notebook of his?_

Judy didn't have any of the messages Cencerro had received or sent using the code his book allowed, but she supposed that it mattered which one had been last. Either _Cencerro sent a message to someone else—which would likely be on one of the last messenger birds out of Phoenix—or Cencerro received a message from someone—which would be one of the last messengers into Phoenix. Narrows things down a bit._ Nick's voice was contemplative in her mind, his paws weighing the options.

Judy could only hope that Bogo would be willing to listen. _Well, that and that he's not in on Cencerro's plan and about to have us put to death for treason,_ Nick's voice came with a cheer that didn't match the words at all.

Judy frowned for a moment, and then pushed the pessimistic thought aside. She was sure everything would end up fine, and Nick chuckled cynically in her head. _Never change, Judy. Never change. But it looks like you can ask him yourself._

On some level, Judy had been paying attention to the scenery as she thought, but those thoughts had consumed the bulk of her attention. It made it more than a little surprising to realize that they had closed a significant amount of the distance between Phoenix and the Middle Wall—and that there was indeed an army.

It was a bit difficult to see, facing backwards, but Judy guessed that there had to be thousands of mammals and dozens of supply carts, all moving at a rapid march that was still far slower than the scouts.

With a seemingly unerring sense of direction, the four scouts approached one of the larger carriages, and once they were cleared for entry by a pair of suspicious-looking guards dropped Judy, Nick, and Nick's bag on the floor, gave one of the briefest reports Judy had ever heard—"No trouble, sir. A sabre and a dagger in the bag." to Captain General Bogo—and been out the door again.

Judy tried not to read too much into the fact that the scouts had simply removed the straps that connected the carrying harnesses to their own bodies rather than releasing her and Nick from the straps that held their limbs tight. She was helpless on her side, completely unable to move, and Bogo didn't do anything to change that. The real Nick was still asleep, snoring gently on the floor near feet, and the Nick inside her head had fallen quiet as Captain General Bogo regarded her from across the massive desk that dominated the carriage.

Even sitting down, he loomed over her, silently regarding her, and Judy tried to match his neutral expression. She lasted about ten seconds before she couldn't wait any longer. "Captain General Bogo, sir, there's a book I need to—"

"Ensign Totchli," Captain General Bogo interrupted, speaking slowly.

His voice was deep and gravelly, and when he spoke Judy could feel the low rumble of it in her chest. When the buffalo had given the address at her graduation, he had been too far away for Judy to really make out, and seeing him more clearly felt as though it emphasized what she had heard about him. His face seemed permanently creased by concern, and there was a hardness to his eyes that she suspected never left them. Despite his age, he was still muscular beneath his uniform, although Judy was more than a little surprised at the platinum torc he wore around his neck; evidently he had been made a lord sometime after her commencement. Judy couldn't help but wonder at what had gone on while she had been outside of Zootopia; had Bogo made significant progress on finding the mammal or mammals responsible for the attempt on the princess's life and been rewarded for it?

"I have questions for you," Bogo continued, and his eyes seemed almost to drill through her, "What happens next depends on how you answer."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

The two cheetahs being so close in appearance that Judy thinks they might be twins is a bit of a nod to one of the most interesting facts about real world cheetahs. Real cheetahs have remarkably low genetic diversity, thought to be caused by the species nearly being wiped out during the last ice age and recovering from a very small population. This lack of genetic diversity has some interesting effects, such as that cheetahs easily accept skin grafts from other cheetahs without the sort of immune response that would be triggered in humans.

"Del Oro" is Spanish for "Of Gold," which seemed to fit a springbok fairly well considering their coloration.

As previously established in chapter 11, and referenced a few times since, sabres are reserved for members of the City Guard at or above the rank of captain, which Judy certainly isn't.

And with this chapter, the two plotlines have finally come together! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and if you're so inclined as to leave a comment I'd love to know what you thought.


	40. Chapter 40

She wasn't afraid of him, which was interesting. Even bound and helpless on the floor of his carriage, facing down his most emotionless stare, there wasn't so much as an ounce of fear on her face. The rabbit was dirty, dust caked into the fabric of her ruined uniform tunic and her breastplate dinged and scuffed. She was injured, if the bandages that wrapped her entire left arm were any indication. But she wasn't afraid.

"What species was your instructor in the use of quauhxicallis?" Bogo asked abruptly, breaking the silence he had allowed to linger after his deliberately ominous pronouncement that her fate rested with him.

The rabbit blinked up at him, obviously confused. "What species?" Bogo pressed.

The golden torc at her neck certainly looked real enough, the metal and insignia claiming that the rabbit was an ensign in the City Guard.

 _Saying a thing does not make it true, Lord Bogo._ The queen's words came, unbidden, to Bogo's mind and he pushed them aside.

The fact that the rabbit before him looked to be Ensign Totchli didn't necessarily mean that she was. Out beyond the protection of the Middle Wall—the protection that the queen had decided was an acceptable risk to travel beyond—anything could have happened. The torc could be a fake, and the methods that usually worked for verifying that a mammal was part of the City Guard were currently worthless without the magic of the torcs active. Or the real Judy Totchli could have been murdered, her torc taken from her corpse and given to a different rabbit to wear. There were too many possibilities, all of them dire, and so Bogo had chosen one of the simplest methods of determining the rabbit's identity.

It was certainly possible for a different rabbit to stand in for Ensign Totchli, and just as possible for that rabbit to be prepared enough to make the illusion convincing. Given enough time, anyone could remember all the codes and regulations of the City Guard. They might even be prepared enough to describe the academy even if they had never set foot in it, or even to speak of the more memorable instructors. Jose Del Riendo, the hyena whose nervous and awkward chuckling at his own terrible jokes had been imitated by decades of students. Lucia of the Inner Baronies, who used the phrase "you're dead" like punctuation. But they wouldn't be prepared to describe Mateo Rumia.

He was almost completely unremarkable in every way. He wasn't fat or thin, dull or engaging. He was the sort of teacher students didn't like or dislike, a solid mammal who did his job without ever getting close to those he taught. But most importantly for the question Bogo had asked, he was—"A bison," the rabbit said, "Professor Rumia."

The confusion was still written across her face, but a degree of tension Bogo hadn't been aware he was carrying in his back left him. It wasn't enough to say that the rabbit wasn't some kind of threat, but it was enough for him to at least believe that she was who she claimed to be. The fox was a different story, and Bogo glanced from the rabbit—Ensign Totchli—to him.

The fox certainly didn't look like any alchemist Bogo had ever seen before. Leaving aside the fact that he was a predator, his clothes were far too plain. Even allowing for some damage and wear, there wasn't nearly enough embroidery to equal what Bogo had seen even the lowest apprentice alchemists wearing, and his bronze torc was strangely unornamented. Bogo had never run across a merchant of any kind who didn't decorate their torc in some way, whether it was with brightly colored threads and glass beads or intricately worked medallions of precious metal and gemstones, and he didn't trust the simplicity of it. It was the sort of thing a mammal did when they tried too hard to seem casual, a little lie that likely set the tone for whatever it was the fox spent most of his time doing.

Even with Bogo's considerable training and experience in interrogation, he couldn't get anything out of a sleeping mammal, and he paused as he considered his next move. He could wake the fox up—assuming that he wasn't simply pretending to be asleep in hopes of listening in on whatever discussion went on without him. There was, however, a simple way to test that. "Ensign Totchli," he said, turning his attention back to her as abruptly as he could, "Is the fox Nicholas of the Middle Baronies?"

"Yes sir," she said, her answer immediate.

Bogo nodded once. "Nicholas of the Middle Baronies," he said, drawing the words out as slowly as he possibly could, standing up and bringing himself to his full height.

The fox and the rabbit had been separated by a good four or five feet on his floor, and Bogo stepped around his desk until he was standing over the supposed alchemist. Unlike Ensign Totchli, who strained at her bonds to try to position herself better to watch what was going on, the fox was completely limp. Except for the regular rise and fall of his chest he might have been dead, his head lolled at an uncomfortable-looking angle with the tip of his tongue poking beyond his muzzle. Bogo drew his sabre from the sheath at his side, deliberately letting the metal of the blade drag against the buckle that attached it to his belt. He made the whispering sound of metal against metal last as long as possible, watching out of the corner of his eye as Ensign Totchli's expression resolved from confusion into worry. That, too, was interesting. "You've been sentenced to death for treason," Bogo said, and he raised the sword in preparation for swinging it down towards the fox's unprotected neck.

"Stop!" Ensign Totchli cried, and her voice sounded unnaturally thick.

The fox hadn't moved at all, betraying either a truly impressive degree of self-control beyond what any mammal could reasonably be expected to exhibit or the fact that he really was asleep. "Please, don't do it," Totchli said, her voice cracking, "He hasn't committed treason, he—"

"So he _is_ asleep. I do apologize, Ensign Totchli," Bogo interrupted, and he smoothly sheathed his blade in a single motion, "But it's necessary for you to understand the stakes."

Bogo had neither liked nor enjoyed the little bit of theater he had engaged in; threatening a citizen, even a fox, was below the dignity of his office. But he had no time to waste in lengthy explanations, and he thought he had succeeded in several goals at once. Beyond verifying that the fox really was asleep, and impressing upon the ensign just how serious the situation was, he had also learned something he hadn't expected.

She cared about him.

In the way that an upstanding member of the City Guard would care about any civilian, increased by the naturally emotional nature of rabbits, perhaps. But Bogo thought there was something more to it. Certainly mammals who went through experiences that nearly killed them tended to end up as friends. Or perhaps...

Bogo brushed the thought aside. Ensign Totchli trusted the fox, whether or not he turned out to be who he claimed to be. At least in his case, it'd be quite simple to verify his identity; if he couldn't perform alchemy then he was an impostor. Or he had somehow cheated his way through becoming certified to perform alchemy jobs for the city, but that was a problem for later.

"The stakes?" Totchli asked.

There was genuine heat in her words, which seemed only fair. It had been a nasty move he had made, no matter how much circumstances might excuse it, and there was a very real possibility he had given her a reason to distrust him, to be less than forthcoming with information. It was the gamble he had made, but there was no way of taking it back.

"Sir, Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro made everyone in Phoenix disappear. He's planning something and—"

"The stakes," Bogo interrupted, "Are that someone committed treason. Perhaps not you or your companion, but someone. And if you are _anything_ less than honest and forthcoming in your testimony, you'll be helping them get away with it. That's also treason."

She didn't respond, and Bogo let the silence last only a moment. "I want to hear everything. From the beginning. Every detail, no matter how unimportant it might seem."

As it turned out, Ensign Totchli was not particularly good at telling stories.

Perhaps she might have done a better job organizing her thoughts into a written report, but he had put her on the spot, and she stumbled over her words, occasionally diving down tangents and cutting herself off. More than once, he caught her glancing at the sleeping fox, who hadn't given any kind of indication that he was waking up. The details came out slowly, and Bogo let them paint him a picture.

To a certain point, everything Totchli reported aligned with what he knew. She had been sent as an escort as a last minute replacement for the mammal originally assigned to the job of bringing the fox to Phoenix to enter a bid for a public works project. Totchli had jumped ahead a bit at that point, saying that Cencerro had claimed the original mammal assigned to be the escort would have framed the fox for something, and Bogo had made a note of it before urging her to continue.

From there, she had nothing of any particular interest to report on the journey she had made to Phoenix on foot with the fox at her side. They had made excellent time, but at no point had spotted any other mammals on the road. It was more or less what Bogo had expected; it aligned with the convoy schedules, at least. He had half-hoped for some unusual traffic to give another clue, but he hadn't expected things to be so easy.

Once in Phoenix, Totchli claimed to have reported to Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro in his capacity as the head of the Phoenix City Guard. That was strictly by the book protocol and quite unsurprising, as was the fact that Cencerro had divided up his troops to search Phoenix for the mammals Bogo had requested. Totchli didn't have any information to report on the tiger and the wolf who lived in Phoenix and practiced blood magic, which was rather disappointing. The reason for it was quite surprising; she claimed that Cencerro had ordered her to spy on Nicholas of the Middle Baronies rather than join the ongoing effort to find those blood magicians.

If she was telling the truth, Bogo had to wonder why Cencerro would have done that. Had he perhaps been partnered with one or both of those blood magicians, quietly feeding them information so that they could avoid his patrols? If he didn't trust a green ensign with contributing to a simple search, why had he trusted her enough to assign her to determine the fox's true motives for visiting Phoenix?

Ensign Totchli claimed that Cencerro was suspicious of the fox—Nick, she called him, with a familiarity that struck Bogo again—showing up in Phoenix just after an unsuccessful attack on the princess where blood magicians in Phoenix were prime suspects. That Cencerro's thoughts had apparently echoed his own struck Bogo as a peculiar bit of irony; as much as he disliked the sheep he was nothing if not competent.

In Totchli's version of events, she hadn't observed the fox doing anything suspicious; he had never gotten the chance to put in his bid for the water purification project, but had attempted to purchase a book on alchemy only to find the shopkeeper dead. She said Cencerro had shown up shortly thereafter and arrested both her and the alchemist, throwing them in Phoenix's cell meant to prevent alchemists from escaping.

Where her story became difficult to believe was when she got to the point where Cencerro had visited them in that cell, gloating about his victory over them and claiming to have held sway over the mammal originally assigned to escort the fox. "That doesn't sound like the Diego Cencerro I know," Bogo interrupted mildly once she got to that point.

It didn't, but he was more interested in her reaction at the moment than her words. "I know," Totchli said, her ears drooping, "It sounds crazy. And he was so... so cold and stiff before. When I first met him, I mean. But when he came to the cell, he sounded like he was _enjoying_ it."

Bogo nodded slowly. In his experience, when mammals made up stories to cover up crimes, they tended to make one or more of three basic mistakes. They overlooked details that should have been there, as he had tested Totchli on when it came to her time at the academy. More than once over the course of his career, he had watched testimonies fall apart over such trivialities; there had been one time a stoat who had claimed to have witnessed a robbery couldn't even name the street the robbery had been on. A little prodding had quickly unraveled his testimony and revealed that he hadn't been anywhere near the scene of the crime and was trying to frame someone. Sometimes criminals gave too much detail; the unfortunate truth of memory was that no one could remember everything in perfectly vivid detail. The more embellishments a story had, the less likely Bogo was to believe that it was true. The final way could be the most subtle, though: they said what they thought the interrogator wanted to hear.

So far, Totchli's testimony had sounded true enough, if only because of how bizarre it was. He would have expected Cencerro to act the same as he ever was if he was really guilty of what Totchli accused him of. But then again, perhaps she was simply adding too much detail, telling a story that sounded plausible to her.

"Sir?" Totchli said tentatively, interrupting his thoughts.

Bogo realized his attention had wandered away for an instant. "Continue, ensign," he said, waving one hoof.

"He said that he didn't have enough members of the City Guard in Phoenix loyal to him to just kill Nick and me without a court martial," she continued, and Bogo hoped dearly that it was true.

If Cencerro had led a grand conspiracy out of Phoenix, it was comforting to think that he had been limited in the number of co-conspirators he had. "So he said that he'd leave us in the cell and we'd die in a few days anyway."

"You didn't," Bogo observed.

He was, he had to admit, more than a little curious as to how they had escaped a cell designed specifically to contain an alchemist. "No sir," Totchli replied, "But before he left, he said he'd be the captain general. He, ah..."

She paused awkwardly, and swallowed hard before continuing. "He said your mistakes would lose you the position. And that he'd be a hero soon."

Her tone was deeply apologetic, but Bogo was careful to keep his face a neutral mask. Frankly, it was a little grating that Totchli was trying to be careful around his feelings; if hearing someone accuse him of making a mistake was enough to hurt him he never would have risen to his rank. "I see," Bogo said, "Did he say anything else? Anything at all?"

"He said he'd tell my parents I died an honorable death," she said.

Cencerro had claimed that she had died such a death, and Bogo was reasonably confident that she was who she claimed to be. As Bogo saw it, there were really only three possibilities. Either virtually everything Ensign Totchli had said was a lie, or virtually everything Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro had said was. The third option, that the truth was somewhere in the middle with Cencerro either being mistaken or deliberately lying about Totchli's death seemed implausible to say the least. If that was the case, why would Totchli spin such an elaborate lie? It wasn't impossible—for all he knew, Totchli was a conspirator who had deliberately incapacitated the mammal ahead of her to escort the alchemist, and was now coming to him to muddy the truth. But unless she thought she had killed Cencerro or otherwise gotten him out of the way, that made no sense; surely she would have known that Cencerro's testimony wouldn't align with hers.

Bogo managed to snap his attention back to her before Ensign Totchli's impatience won out, which was something of a victory for him; it was getting to be somewhat embarrassing how easily his focus seemed to drift. The part of her story about her escape from the cell was interesting only inasmuch as it revealed how poorly designed the cell was; thankfully the high-security cells in the heart of Zootopia had no such vulnerability.

From there, she explained how they had found a book in Cencerro's office, which she said was in the bag on the floor. Considering that Bogo hadn't yet trusted her enough to break her bonds (if his occasional lapses in focus were embarrassing, being killed by a bunny would have been even more so), he cautiously opened the bag. _If it explodes, this all becomes someone else's problem_ , he thought darkly, but nothing happened.

The contents of the bag seemed to be mostly assorted alchemy supplies, but he found the book easily enough. It was a small ledger with a bland black cover, but as he pulled it out a frown involuntarily crossed his face. He had the vague notion he had seen a book exactly like it before, and that quite recently, but he couldn't remember where. Then again, it was rather unremarkable; there were likely hundreds if not thousands of books that looked identical to it from the outside. As for the contents of the book, Bogo thought them much more likely to be relatively unique; he saw instantly that it was certainly a code book for encrypting and decrypting messages. "So Cencerro must have been in contact with someone else, probably outside Phoenix," Ensign Totchli explained needlessly but eagerly, "I couldn't tell if the last message was one he received or one he sent, but the timing must have been important, right?"

Bogo nodded, and then carefully closed the ledger and set it aside. If he could find the mammal or mammals who had the matching partner of the ledger, it'd be proof of their guilt. Or at least, that someone had tried framing them, but it would be a tremendous start. He made a note to himself to have the belongings of the members of the queen's council searched; there was no telling if he might have a stroke of luck. "Continue, please," he said, rather than explaining himself to the ensign, "I want to hear your impression of Phoenix as you left."

Considering that he had his newest member of the City Guard flying reconnaissance, he was quite interested in whether Totchli's testimony would align with the little rodent's once he returned. "It was like everyone had just up and left, sir," the bunny explained, "There was no one in Phoenix, just abandoned meals and tables and chairs."

"And I know how this must sound," Totchli added hastily, "But maybe the army around Phoenix is made up of the citizens of Phoenix. Something that controls their minds. If that's possible, that is."

That seemed to Bogo a rather fanciful flight of imagination, but Totchli was young, inexperienced, and a rabbit. He could certainly forgive wild speculation so long as she reported the facts accurately. "I see," Bogo replied as neutrally as possible, "We are considering all the possibilities, ensign."

She nodded eagerly; apparently Bogo had successfully kept his feelings off his face. Totchli's subsequent description of the mammals surrounding Phoenix told him nothing he didn't already know, and she hurried through her explanation of escaping through the ruins. She hadn't seen any sign of the invading army entering through those ruins, which didn't necessarily mean that they hadn't, but it was another point of data. Her explanation of her injured arm was of no interest to Bogo; he was well aware of the danger that the monsters under Phoenix posed. He had pressed her along before she could go into any kind of detail, and it didn't take her long to reach the point where his scouts had found her and the fox in the wastelands, tired and hungry.

"Thank you, Ensign Totchli," Bogo said, once he was sure she was done, "Your testimony will be invaluable. I'll want to talk to the fox once he wakes, of course."

If Totchli was telling the truth, as he was starting to suspect she was, he was not surprised that the fox was unconscious; he knew even master alchemists could be exhausted by complex bits of alchemy, and breaking out of a cell and then making a bridge sounded as though they would fit the bill. Adding to that several days of little food or water, and it was somewhat surprising he was still alive.

But whether or not the fox lived was not his primary concern at the moment; Bogo ran one thick finger down his meticulous notes, and realized he hadn't asked about something he had meant to. Cursing his attention's tendency to drift, Bogo looked up over his desk at where Ensign Totchli was still on the floor.

She hadn't complained about the restraints at all, which put her a step above most criminals Bogo had arrested, and while she looked tired there was an eager-to-please brightness in her eyes that hadn't dimmed. "Just one more thing, Ensign Totchli, and then we can look into finding you some more suitable arrangements. There was a messenger bird that made it out of Phoenix shortly before communication stopped," Bogo said, eying Totchli carefully, "There was a female shrew riding it, who might have used the name 'Fermina.' Did you see her, or see Nicholas speaking with her?"

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Bogo remembers something that the queen said in chapter 28 when relating a story from her own youth; "Saying a thing does not make it true, Lord Bogo."

Del Riendo's name is derived from the Spanish word for "laughing," which seemed appropriate for a hyena.

The instructor who peppers her speech with the phrase "you're dead," is naturally a reference to Judy's drill instructor from the movie, who seems to see the possibility for fatal consequences in everything.

In real life, swords generally don't make an impressive noise when you draw them from a sheath; that's a bit of Hollywood dramatic flair. You don't want your blade being dulled by scraping it against something metal, so sheaths are either made out of or lined with something relatively soft, letting you draw in near-silence. In this instance, Bogo wanted a dramatic sound, hence him deliberately letting his sword rub against a metal buckle as he draws it.

Bogo notes that the ledger Nick and Judy found is small, whereas Judy did not; he is quite a bit larger than her, so it's really all a matter of perspective.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought!


	41. Chapter 41

Two Nicks made Judy's head hurt.

The real Nick was snoring on the floor, and hadn't moved so much as an inch since being thrown into Bogo's carriage. The other Nick, the one who seemed to have taken up residence in her head, had moved beyond simply being a voice nearly the instant after Bogo first spoke. She could actually _see_ him, casually sitting on the floor and leaning against the slumbering form of the real Nick.

"Does it really matter if _I'm_ not real?" he said; even with his newfound apparent solidity he had apparently retained his ability to understand her thoughts, "You're going to need some help getting through an interrogation."

The other Nick chuckled, brushing a paw through the thick fur of the real Nick's tail. "And he's not exactly much help right now, is he?"

Judy didn't quite have the words to describe how odd seeing that touch had been. The real Nick's fur hadn't moved, of course. There was simply no way that a hallucination—maybe brought on by some combination of hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, but undeniably a hallucination—could actually touch a real object. It would be crazy to think that it could. And yet...

It was as though she had seen both possibilities, the other Nick's paw passing through strands of fur without touching them but also the other Nick's paw sweeping those strands aside. A searing wave of pain had gone through her head, like a nail was being driven into her brain, and the other Nick had pulled his paw back from the real Nick's tail. "Sorry," he said, "I won't do that again."

Before she could even begin to formulate any kind of thought, the other Nick gestured toward Bogo. "You might want to pay attention to what he's saying," he said, and he had turned his own attention toward the head of the City Guard.

"What species was your instructor in the use of quauhxicallis?" Bogo asked suddenly, very nearly the instant after she had turned her full attention back to him.

Her resulting confusion at the bizarre first question had been mixed with concern that there was something wrong with her. Crazy mammals had no part being in the City Guard, after all, and if she was hallucinating a second Nick, could everything else she saw and her be similarly unreliable? "No, it's just me," the other Nick said, interrupting her thoughts, "And you didn't miss anything. Big, tall, and serious here is trying to figure out if you're really who you say you are. Throw you off-balance. They didn't teach you how to do interrogations?"

Judy had, in fact, learned the basics, although she hadn't served long enough to get any practical experience. Her mission to escort Nick had been her first real assignment, but she realized that the other Nick was right. Bogo was trying to be an intimidating, unreadable interrogator, and to that end he was succeeding remarkably well. In her position, arms and legs bound, laying on the floor, she was forced to literally look up to him, and he was staggeringly tall. The face atop that mountain of muscle was implacable, as though he didn't particularly care one way or the other what happened to her.

"A bison," Judy answered, "Professor Rumia."

Having an idea of what Bogo was trying might have been more comforting if it hadn't been for the continued presence of the other Nick. She refused to believe that everyone who had ever said that rabbits were too fragile for service in the City Guard was right after all; there had to be a reasonable explanation rather than that she had simply cracked under the pressure. Maybe once she had the chance to get some food and water into her stomach and get a little sleep the vision would vanish. She could tell Nick about it, let him tease her about what it meant about her that she had seen a hallucination of him, and that would be that. Just an odd little thing that had happened once and would never happen again.

"I'm not sure I would count on that," the other Nick said, his voice full of the wry tone she knew so well from the real Nick, "But if it makes it easier for you..."

He shrugged, and Judy couldn't help but envy his apparent freedom of movement. _His_ arms and legs weren't bound, and he looked perfectly at ease sitting on the floor next to himself. Unlike the real Nick, the other Nick didn't look travel worn at all; his clothes—the same outfit Nick had been wearing when they first met—were immaculately clean, and his fur seemed to all but glow in the light of the alchemical torches that lined the carriage. If Nick had been cleaner—or if the other Nick had been dirtier—Judy didn't think she would have been able to tell them apart.

"I'll take that as a compliment," the other Nick said.

It was more than a little unsettling that he didn't need her to say anything, or even just think at him hard, to be able to respond. "I _am_ in your head, Carrots," he said, "And you probably don't want Bogo thinking you're crazy by talking to no one, right? That's why I'm sitting here."

Judy realized what he meant; if Bogo noticed her looking at the other Nick, it'd simply look as though she was looking at the real one. "Clever bunny," the other Nick said, nodding approvingly.

Judy hoped that she wasn't appearing too crazy to Bogo; he had been silent for a while, probably carefully observing her. "Is the fox Nicholas of the Middle Baronies?" Bogo asked suddenly.

"Yes sir," Judy said, doing her best to pay him close attention.

Bogo's face was still unreadable, even as he slowly stood up from behind his desk and walked over to where the real Nick was on the ground. He stood so close to him that the other Nick scooted away so that they wouldn't touch. Not that they could touch, of course, but after what seeing the other Nick interact with reality had done to her head Judy was glad that there wouldn't be a repeat.

Bogo nodded, his face a mask. The other Nick watched him, a wary expression on his face, but he didn't say anything. "Nicholas of the Middle Baronies," Bogo said, seeming to drag the words out as though he didn't believe that they were true.

Judy strained at the straps tying her limbs together, trying to position herself better to see Bogo's face. It occurred to her that if Bogo was a part of Cencerro's conspiracy, the buffalo had them completely at his mercy. As if in response to her thoughts, Bogo reached down to his waist and drew his sabre.

It was much larger than the one that Nick had made for her, and much less elaborate. But the slowly emerging blade looked wickedly sharp, gleaming mercilessly in the light. The other Nick's eyes widened in surprise, but Judy doubted he could anything else. "You've been sentenced to death for treason," Bogo said, each word hard, and he drew the blade up.

For one instant—one terrible instant—Judy couldn't get any words out. She thought she was about to watch Nick die, falling beneath her commanding officer's sword, and after him she would surely be next. It was monstrously unfair; they had barely had any time together at all, and they had fought too hard to die so easily. Judy had killed a cavern full of terrible monsters for Nick, and he had pushed himself to his breaking point to save her when it had nearly cost Judy her arm and her life. And now she was completely helpless to do anything to save him.

"Stop!" Judy cried, and her voice in her ears didn't sound like her own.

"Please, don't do it," Judy begged, not even trying to "He hasn't committed treason, he—"

"So he is asleep. I do apologize, Ensign Totchli," Bogo interrupted, and he sheathed his sword as though he hadn't been about to murder an innocent mammal, "But it's necessary for you to understand the stakes."

"I don't think I like your captain general very much," the other Nick observed, "But you must not get the top position by being soft."

The other Nick's face had resolved itself back into a familiar expression of mild disinterest, but Judy tried not to pay the vision any mind no matter how much she agreed with him in the moment. "The stakes?" she demanded of Bogo.

There was a pit of genuine anger in her stomach that surprised her at its depth, and she couldn't back down even as the other Nick tried to talk her into it. "Carrots, you're letting him get you worked up. You really need to—"

"Sir, Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro made everyone in Phoenix disappear. He's planning something and—" Judy began, cutting the voice of the other Nick off before Bogo spoke over her.

"The stakes," Bogo interrupted, "Are that someone committed treason. Perhaps not you or your companion, but someone. And if you are anything less than honest and forthcoming in your testimony, you'll be helping them get away with it. That's also treason."

Judy could feel herself trembling, and she tried to get herself back under control. The other Nick might just be a crazy hallucination born out of her tired and starved mind, feeding her own thoughts back to her, but he was right. Bogo was pushing her to get her off balance, preparing to doubt everything she said.

"That's better," the other Nick said with an encouraging tone, "And for what it's worth, you're not crazy."

"I want to hear everything. From the beginning. Every detail, no matter how unimportant it might seem," Bogo said, and Judy took a deep breath.

Judy couldn't help but feel that she might have done a better job without the other Nick offering her suggestions or reminders, but after Bogo's intimidation attempt, things went surprisingly well. Bogo had even cut her off and told her to skip past her encounter with the monsters under Phoenix before she could so much as mention her arm. "That was a lucky break," the other Nick commented at Bogo's interruption, "Although I kind of wanted to hear you tell that part of the story."

From there, the story had gotten easier to tell. She knew she still had to tell Bogo about her arm, and she fully intended to, but so long as his orders were to tell him everything he thought was relevant as quickly as possible she would do her best. By the end, Bogo even seemed to have relaxed a bit.

"Thank you, Ensign Totchli," Bogo said, with a politeness that was somewhat surprising for a mammal who had threatened Nick with a sword not too long before, "Your testimony will be invaluable. I'll want to talk to the fox once he wakes, of course."

"That'll be fun, I'm sure," the other Nick commented darkly, glancing down at the sleeping face of the real Nick, "Something tells me he's not going to go quite as easy."

Judy couldn't help but think that he was right, and as Bogo shuffled through papers on his desk she wondered if it was the right moment to bring up her arm. Bogo would learn of it eventually, of course, and maybe it would be better if he didn't get the impression that she was deliberately hiding it. Judy wanted to think that Bogo never would have gotten a job that put him so close to the princess if he hated chimeras, but maybe he considered the princess an exception. As Judy was about to speak up to get Bogo's attention, he looked up from his papers, a frown creasing his face.

"Just one more thing, Ensign Totchli, and then we can look into finding you some more suitable arrangements. There was a messenger bird that made it out of Phoenix shortly before communication stopped," Bogo said, and his eyes seemed to be boring holes through her, "There was a female shrew riding it, who might have used the name 'Fermina.' Did you see her, or see Nicholas speaking with her?"

At Bogo's words, Judy's mouth went instantly dry and any thought of mentioning her arm instantly fell from her mind. "I—" she began, "Fermina?"

She could feel her nose twitching and was powerless to stop it. If she lied, and Bogo found out, he would almost certainly go through with his threat to find her guilty of treason. And from the way Bogo had referred to Nick as "the fox" she didn't think he'd be any more lenient on him. But if she told the truth, Bogo might put Nick to death. It was impossible, each option no better than the other.

"Yes," Bogo said slowly, "Fermina. Do you recall anything that might help us find this shrew?"

He knew.

There was no doubt in Judy's mind that Bogo was reading her face like an open book; it felt as though her ears were burning like charcoals. Judy swallowed hard. "The..." she began, "The thing is..."

"Oh, Carrots," the other Nick said with a sigh, and he pushed himself to his feet.

He was standing next to the real Nick, shaking his head. "Let me save you some trouble. Wake up!" the other Nick said, and as he spoke he directed a kick at the head of the real Nick.

The moment of contact between the two of them sent an eye-watering burst of pain through Judy's head that made what she had felt before feel like nothing. It was as though red-hot spikes were being shoved through her skull, the two different visions refusing to overlap. The other Nick's foot passed through the real Nick's head even as it made contact and Nick's head snapped back. The memories warred with each other, spots of color bursting in her vision.

And then the other Nick was gone and the real Nick sat up.

Judy realized her jaw had literally dropped in surprise. It shouldn't have been possible. The other Nick shouldn't have been able to actually do anything. And yet, somehow he had. The timing made it impossible for it to be anything else; the other Nick was _real_.

But in the name of all the gods, Judy had no idea what that meant. Was the other Nick actually Nick, using a power she had never heard of alchemists having? Or was he something else? Judy had never before heard of a chimera being created in quite the same way as her; chimeras like the princess were created before they were born, not as adults. Had something, some piece of Nick, slipped into her head along with the copies of his internal organs and his arm? Did the real Nick even know about the other Nick that had started as a voice in her head?

Judy almost missed it when Nick spoke, but the fox had his attention firmly on Bogo. "I can tell you a lot more about Fermina than the ensign here can," he said, with a casualness that was impressive.

There was a surprising confidence in his voice, considering that he couldn't move his arms or legs at all. The only reason he had been able to sit up, so far as Judy could tell, was that the woven straps constricting his limbs were somewhat looser than her own. Otherwise, he was no freer to move than she was. "Is that so?" Bogo asked, the question so flat that it sounded more like a statement.

"It is," Nick said brightly, "Her real name is Fernanda. You might know her father. Alfonso? Tlatoani? Oh, what am I saying? You arrested him, of course you know who he is."

Nick laughed, glancing around as though he was wondering why no one was laughing with him. Judy was too stunned to say anything, and even Bogo seemed completely flummoxed by Nick's willingness to talk. "Anyway, she wanted a fake torc, so I made one and sold it to her. That's about it."

It seemed to take Bogo a moment to find his voice. "You've just confessed to a number of serious crimes," he said at last, in such a way that made Judy think that the absolute last thing he had expected was for Nick to do so.

"I don't think I have, actually," he said, "What laws did I break?"

"Counterfeiting torcs is—" Judy began automatically, but Nick cut her off.

"Counterfeiting torcs is a crime only within the boundaries of the Middle Wall," Nick said, and then he looked down at the straps preventing his arms from moving and frowned.

"Is there any chance you could loosen these? It's hard to gesture and they're really starting to chafe," he said, and then looked back up at Bogo, "I think that might be a loophole that was left there on purpose, but I don't write the laws or mass-produce torcs. I just made the one for her, and I did it in Phoenix."

He was, Judy realized, right. She had memorized Zootopia's legal code, and it had never even occurred to her that it was a loophole someone could take advantage of. "And bringing a counterfeit torc past the Middle Wall is also a crime, fox," Bogo said, and Nick nodded agreeably.

"That's true. But if Fernanda decides to do that, it's her breaking the law, not me. You wouldn't arrest a sword-maker if one of his customers bought a sword and then stabbed someone, would you?"

"You were consorting with a criminal," Bogo said, all but spitting the words, and Nick shook his head.

"Her father was arrested for his many crimes—and that was a great job on the City Guard's part, I'd applaud you if I could move my paws—but I don't remember _her_ committing any."

"Fernanda is wanted for questioning," Bogo said, and it was either her imagination of Judy could hear his teeth grinding.

"Which doesn't make her a criminal," Nick countered, his tone smug, "You don't have—"

"Do you think this is a game, fox?" Bogo roared.

His voice was painfully loud, and his face had twisted into an expression of rage. He slammed his massive hooves into his desk, scattering papers as he stood up and stormed over to Nick. With no apparent effort, he lifted Nick with one arm, holding him inches from his face. Nick's eyes widened, his smugness suddenly gone, and he dangled helplessly. "I don't need the _law_ to have you tried for treason, fox," he said, "I can—"

"You can't," Judy said, so quietly at first that she doubted Bogo had heard her.

"You can't," she repeated, more loudly, and she looked up at Bogo.

His chest was heaving with emotion, flecks of spittle around his blunt muzzle. He looked dangerous, a mammal not quite in control of himself. "If we start executing mammals without proof, without making sure of their guilt, we're no better than they are," Judy said, her voice firm.

"I'm trying to save the kingdom, ensign," Bogo said.

His voice had gotten low and dangerous, but he was still holding Nick by the strap that crossed the fox's chest. He shook Nick as if for emphasis. "The kingdom and everyone who lives in it," he said, but the anger seemed to be fading out of him.

"And if I had been a part of Cencerro's conspiracy," Nick said, with a gentleness that Judy found impressive, "I could have killed you just now."

He waggled his paws—which, Judy saw, he had somehow gotten free of his bonds—and kept speaking in that same even tone. "I could have transmuted your blood to acid or the air in your lungs to poison, but I didn't."

Judy realized then what Nick had done. He had deliberately antagonized the captain general, pushing him to the point where Nick would have had an opportunity an assassin couldn't possibly overlook. Nick was right; as an alchemist simply being able to touch Bogo meant that he could have killed the buffalo if he had wanted to. It was something she would have never thought of herself, to effectively weaponize the truth, and yet it seemed to have worked.

"You've proven your point, fox," Bogo said, and he lowered Nick back to the ground.

Not gently, but not roughly either. "I'm... sorry you had to see that, ensign," Bogo said as he retook his seat behind his desk.

If it bothered Nick that the apology hadn't been directed at him, he didn't show it. "We want to help, sir. Cencerro needs to be stopped before he can finish whatever it is he has planned," Judy said.

Bogo sighed, and suddenly he looked older. Weaker. He must have been pushing himself to his own breaking point, and Judy couldn't even begin to imagine the burden he had been under. "I'll still want to know everything about Fernanda," he said, "Alfonso might be involved, and he might have pulled her in."

"Of course," Nick said, nodding, and he actually managed to sound sincere.

Bogo began pulling his papers together, and Judy could practically feel the fragile trust he was putting in them. She took a deep breath. "Sir, there's something else you should know," she said.

"Judy," Nick began, shooting her a warning look, but she plunged on.

"I want you to know that I'm not hiding anything, sir. That you can trust me. It's about my arm..."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

I don't really have much to say for this chapter. Revisiting a conversation from the other side was interesting as a writer, hopefully you found it interesting as a reader!

Although Bogo does probably owe Nick an apology for his threats, it's been previously noted in the story that nobles don't apologize to commoners, something that Bogo's been on the other side of before. Judy is the daughter of a noble family and an officer of the City Guard, which I imagine to be the one organization where the rigid rules of high society have some flexibility.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought if you're so inclined as to leave a comment.


	42. Chapter 42

As Bogo cut through the straps binding Ensign Totchli's limbs—the fox had already freed himself completely unaided—he couldn't help but wonder if he was doing the right thing. Did he actually trust the rabbit's testimony, or was he simply trying to save face after being embarrassed by a fox?

And he had been embarrassed, he knew that much. He could try to make excuses for himself—that he was tired, that it really was the most important problem he had to solve, even that he had been deliberately provoked—but they all rang false. The fox had provoked him, it was true, with what Bogo recognized after the fact as a truly impressive amount of skill. But Bogo had had every opportunity to realize what was going on, as the fox continually and deliberately drew attention to his paws and his bindings, but he had let every single one of those opportunities pass him by. The temper that had almost cost him his career decades ago had flared up with a brutal intensity Bogo couldn't recall having felt anytime in the recent past, and in his moment of rage he had nearly committed a gross violation of his sworn oath.

Until the rabbit had stopped him.

That, Bogo decided as he watched her rub at her wrists as she sat up, was what had influenced him the most. Totchli obviously cared for the fox, and deeply at that, but she had remembered her own oath. She had known what the fox had eventually confessed with deliberate casualness; of that much he was entirely certain. Totchli simply couldn't keep her emotions off her face, and if the academy still had patolli gambling rings Bogo was sure she had never walked away a winner. Bogo was equally certain, though, that she was going to tell him everything she knew about Fermina, no matter the cost it might have for her own credibility or for the continued freedom of the alchemist. How many members of the City Guard had that kind of devotion to duty? A certain amount of corruption was an inevitable truth of the job, no matter how much Bogo hated it, but even the guards who didn't take bribes had a cost. There would be something—or someone—that they'd bend or break the rules for.

But not for Totchli.

He couldn't help but feel a grudging admiration for her, even as he wished she hadn't been born a rabbit. If she was a larger mammal it'd be a lot easier to help her career along once he got to the bottom of the situation in Phoenix and the attempts on the princess's life. Assuming that he succeeded and there was still a City Guard left after everything was over, of course.

But Bogo pushed that maudlin thought aside as he watched Totchli take one of the chairs in front of his desk. She had said that it'd be best if she showed him rather than simply tell him, and he had agreed. The fox, after his single sharp warning, hadn't spoken again, and his eyes were also on Totchli as she reached over with her right paw and began unwinding the bandages from her left. "An Ehecatl nearly bit my arm off," she said as the tightly wrapped bandages started coming loose, "I almost died."

Bogo couldn't help but frown at that. Ehecatls, he knew, had mouths like the cruelest traps a mammal could devise, full of wickedly sharp teeth designed to strip flesh from bone. But they were venomous, too, and Bogo had never heard of a mammal surviving a bite except from juvenile Ehecatls that hadn't come into their venom yet. And even then, of all the mammals he had ever heard of who survived an Ehecatl bite, he had never heard of one being as small as a rabbit.

He wasn't sure what he was expecting as more bandages came off—perhaps that Totchli's arm would be horribly withered, or even that the bandages were the only thing holding putrefying flesh onto her bones—but her paw didn't look out of the ordinary to him. The fur covering it was dark brown rather than gray with a white underside like her other paw, but not every mammal's coloration was symmetrical. But as more and more of the bandages came off, Bogo saw that partway up Totchli's forearm the dark brown gave way to red-orange. As he looked more closely, even the texture and the length of the fur seemed to be off, and there was something odd about that color. The color was quite vivid; it looked to be exactly the same as the—"Nicholas healed me with alchemy," Totchli continued, flexing the fingers of her left paw, "He made me a copy of his own arm."

Bogo had seen quite a few of the wonders that alchemy was capable of, as there seemed to be little alchemists enjoyed more than showing each other up. And while the attempts to heal the prince consort with a philosopher's stone had failed, he had seen plenty of successes. Blind mammals who had their sight restored. Crippled mammals who walked again. He had even seen the heir to a noble family who had suffered such extensive burns in an accident that it was impossible to tell his species be fully restored to perfect health. But he had never seen anything like Totchli's arm. Even chimeras like the princess were the blended result of two species, something new and unique in each case. "I guess I'm a chimera now," Totchli continued, and her tone was almost apologetic.

With the bandages completely off her arm, Bogo could see the point where it had been attached, the gradual transition of red-orange to gray and the vein-like traceries of fox fur that continued up her shoulder. He understood in that moment what the fox had done, and he also realized why the fox had seemed to warn Totchli about mentioning it to him.

It shouldn't have bothered Bogo that a fox didn't think much of him. Just about every fox he had ever met had been a thief of some kind or another with absolutely no room to take the moral high ground. And the practiced ease with which he had been manipulated, to say nothing of the fox's obvious connection to Alfonso of New Quimichin, made Bogo suspect that the fox before him had a past about as shady as possible. But despite all of that, it seemed the alchemist had expected him, the member of the City Guard most devoted to the princess's welfare, to think less of Totchli for being a chimera. It was more than a little insulting, and the worst of it was that Bogo wasn't sure it was entirely undeserved. But his own feelings were completely meaningless to the dilemma before him, and he pushed the thought aside. "To be frank, Ensign Totchli, I don't particularly care," Bogo said, doing his best to project an authoritative air of indifference, "So long as you can carry out your duties, you're still an active member of the City Guard."

Something like relief mixed with anxiety washed over her face as she seemed to take something out of his words he hadn't deliberately put in them. "That's— That's another thing, sir. I'm... Ever since..." she fumbled over her words, and then suddenly turned to the fox, "Nick, I've been seeing you."

"I wasn't invisible before, Ca— Ensign. Are you feeling alright?" he replied, and Bogo couldn't help but wonder what he had been about to call Totchli even as he tried to read the fox's expression.

He thought that there was concern there, but whether that was all that was there he couldn't tell. "No, I saw— There were _two_ of you. Then the other one kicked you and you woke up the instant he did it and then _he_ vanished and it was like you knew exactly what Captain General Bogo and I were—"

"Slow down there," the fox said, putting his paws out, "No one kicked me awake; I woke up a couple minutes before I started talking. Took some time to loosen those straps and sit up, you see."

"You did?" Totchli asked.

Neither the rabbit nor the fox was paying Bogo any mind, apparently lost in their own discussion. "I did," the fox replied, his tone quite gentle, "You're not seeing this other Nick now, are you?"

"No..." she replied, drawing out the word, "And you really don't remember anything before you woke up?"

The fox shook his head. "Last thing I remember is falling asleep while being carried back."

Bogo felt a stab of guilt as he watched them. He had ignored it before, in his zeal to question them, but both of the mammals before him showed every sign of being on the ragged edge of thirst and hunger. There was a gauntness to both of them—the fox especially—and he realized just how hard they must have pushed to try to get information about Cencerro back to him. It was a small wonder, really, that Totchli had started hallucinating. "You're tired, hungry, and thirsty, Ensign Totchli," Bogo said, "I'll send for some food and drink for the both of you."

Both mammals turned toward him, Totchli's face betraying a surprise that the fox's didn't, and Bogo saw again just how worn she must have been.

"Sir—" Totchli began protesting, but she fell silent when the fox nudged her.

Bogo stuck his head outside the carriage long enough to put in an order with one of his guards and then turned back to his papers, pointedly turning his attention away from the pair. When he sensed that Totchli was about to speak again, he cut her off before she had the chance to get so much as a word out without looking up from the page. "Getting some rest is an order, Ensign," he said, as mildly as he could, and she stayed silent.

* * *

The food that was brought into the carriage wasn't much—a thin and salty vegetable broth served with hard rolls—but there was a lot of it, and both mammals fell to their bowls as though it was the most delicious meal they had ever eaten. Each of them guzzled down the canteens of cool water that had been brought in to accompany the soup, and when they were finished sopping up the last of the soup with the remains of their rolls they both looked almost sated.

"The question now is what do I do about Lieutenant Colonel Cencerro," Bogo said, speaking as though it was the next natural part of their conversation.

For him, at least, it was, and neither the rabbit nor the fox seemed surprised at his abrupt opening. It was what had occupied his thoughts the entire time he waited for their food to arrive and while they ate. Totchli looked up at him sharply. "Do you know where he is, sir?"

"I do," Bogo replied, and he explained the version of events that Cencerro had given.

The words came out with surprising ease; he supposed that on some level he really did simply trust Totchli. Certainly she was a mammal who didn't seem well-versed at keeping things secret, even when it would benefit her. If it was an act, it was a truly impressive one, and Bogo didn't think anyone with an ulterior motive would have acted as she did, calling her own credibility into doubt. The raw emotion could have been faked, perhaps; when Bogo had been a lieutenant he had arrested a con artist who could cry on command, which she had used to great effect in a trick involving a supposedly valuable ring. That con artist had been, coincidentally enough, a vixen, but Bogo pushed aside the memory of that long-ago case. Perhaps Totchli wasn't the only one who needed some rest, but there was still far too much to do.

As he turned his attention back toward Ensign Totchli, he realized, to his chagrin, that she had apparently said something and was waiting for a response, but he had no idea what it had been. Thankfully, and it struck Bogo as something odd to be glad about, the fox didn't have anything in the way of respect for the chain of command. "So you _don't_ think Cencerro's telling the truth," the fox said, but his eyes were cynical as he looked up at Bogo.

That, at least, gave Bogo a way to rejoin the conversation. "I don't," he said at last, "Ensign, I'm sure you understand the gravity of my saying so."

She nodded seriously, as did the fox. Then again, from what Bogo had seen, he probably understood the laws of Zootopia better than half his officers. The beginning of an idea tickled at his mind, and Bogo set it aside for later, for after he had dealt with Cencerro. His plan for that, at least, was relatively simple to start with, and it didn't take long to make the arrangements to have Cencerro brought to his carriage.

* * *

Bogo liked to think that he was not a stupid mammal, and he had taken every reasonable precaution before allowing Cencerro to be brought into his carriage. Having him searched and stripped of anything he could use in combat was his primary concern, as without either a weapon or a quauhxicalli the sheep didn't exactly stand a chance against him in a fight. It was also the sort of precaution that wouldn't appear unusual to the fussy and rule-bound lieutenant colonel, particularly under such dire circumstances.

Bogo had expected that Diego Cencerro might put on something of a show upon seeing Totchli again. Perhaps claim how glad he was to see that she had survived, perhaps eagerly demand to hear the story of how she had done so. What actually happened when Cencerro entered the carriage, though, was something Bogo couldn't have guessed in his wildest imaginings. The sheep turned to Totchli, politely extending one hoof. "Lieutenant Colonel Diego Cencerro," he said, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Ensign...?"

Totchli gaped at Cencerro in open astonishment, and Bogo supposed that if he hadn't had better control of himself he might have done the same. Pretending not to know who the rabbit was seemed to be about the weakest possible play that Cencerro could make. "Totchli," the doe said at last, hesitantly accepting Cencerro's proffered hoof as though it was something poisonous, "We've... already met, lieutenant colonel."

"Impossible," Cencerro said, rigidly shaking his head, "I saw Ensign Totchli die with my own eyes. Captain General Bogo, this rabbit is an impostor."

"What's that make me, Diego?" the fox asked sharply, not even giving the sheep the courtesy of his title, "Do you remember your old pal, Nick?"

"You're not Nicholas of the Middle Baronies," Cencerro said, shaking his head again, and then he turned his attention back to Bogo.

"I'm not sure what these mammals have been telling you, but they're not who they say they are," Cencerro said.

His posture was just as stiff and his words were just as precise as ever, but to Bogo's eyes there was something dreadfully off about the sheep. His face was unnaturally tight and his eyes appeared almost sunken, and his fingers seemed to be shaking at his sides. "So far as I know, I'm the _only_ fox alchemist," the fox observed dryly, "Or do you have an interesting theory for how I'd be faking that?"

"It's not up to me to explain your trickery, _fox_!" Cencerro said, spitting the word, "You think you're clever, but you're not."

"Lieutenant Colonel," Bogo began, "Please—"

"And you!" Cencerro said, jerkily turning to face him, "Can't you see?"

The sheep's face worked unpleasantly, as though he had lost control of himself. One eye twitched, his mouth twisting in a grimace. "Don't... Don't you _see_?" he asked, "You're a... a..."

Cencerro grimaced as though he had tasted something unpleasant. "The picture," he choked out at last, "The bigger picture."

Totchli and the fox exchanged worried glances, and Bogo couldn't blame them. It was looking less like Cencerro was trying some strategy to avoid punishment for his crimes and more like he was suffering from some kind of breakdown. Any thought that Totchli might have been lying had completely vanished in the face of Cencerro's bizarre behavior, but the sheep clearly knew something. "It's over, Cencerro," Bogo said as gently as he could, "Tell me everything you know and I can guarantee you a cell instead of a noose."

"I... I..." Cencerro began, but he never got the chance to finish.

There was a muffled cracking noise like a whip being snapped from behind a wall that seemed to come from inside Cencerro's head, and then the sheep collapsed to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. Ensign Totchli was on the floor and cradling his head before Bogo could even begin to warn her that it might be a trap, but she pulled back nearly the instant she touched him with a cry of alarm.

Thin trickles of blood were coming from all of Cencerro's orifices, and there was a horribly deflated look to his head where it touched the ground; the flesh under his close-cropped wool had deformed as though he didn't have a skull.

"He's dead," Totchli said, a stunned look coming across her face.

The fox walked over to the corpse and carefully pushed against Cencerro's forehead with one finger. Just like the side of his head had, it pushed inward with no visible resistance, and the fox pulled his paw back in obvious disgust. "I think all the bones in his head got transmuted into sand," he said.

The blood coming from Cencerro's nostrils did have an oddly grainy texture to it, and Bogo saw no reason to doubt the alchemist's assessment. "Who could have _done_ that?" Totchli asked, echoing the question that was on Bogo's mind.

"It'd be pretty gruesome if that's the one piece of alchemy Cencerro knew," the fox said, his voice thoughtful, "I've seen things pulled out of the ruins of Quimichpatlan Barony, though, little alchemical gadgets that just need a complete philosopher's stone to power them. Maybe about the size of a pea for something like this."

"The Alchemist Guild or a very wealthy mammal, then," Totchli said.

It was not, unfortunately, a particularly helpful way of narrowing things down. All of the mammals Bogo considered his top suspects were quite wealthy, and all had connections in some way or another to the Alchemist Guild. "It's another clue," Bogo said before he realized he had spoken the words aloud.

"It's another opportunity to catch the mastermind," he continued, and Totchli slowly nodded.

They hadn't learned much from Cencerro directly, but Bogo thought he had indirectly learned quite a bit. Someone had been keeping a very close eye on the sheep, someone who had either murdered him or given him what he needed to commit suicide. If it was the former, it meant that the mastermind, or at least someone higher up the chain of conspiracy than Cencerro, was indeed close by. If it was the latter, there might still be some hint as to how Cencerro had arranged his own death, perhaps starting with the code book Totchli had recovered from his office. Another mammal might have been discouraged by the dead end, but Bogo wasn't. He knew he was on the right track, and if nothing else a traitor to the City Guard was gone. Beyond that, all there was to do was push onward.

Bogo arranged to have the corpse removed and subjected to an autopsy with the guards keeping pace with his carriage, the fox and the rabbit watching quietly as it was removed. He hadn't ordered them to leave, and so they stayed in the carriage, watching mutely while Bogo made arrangements for the next round of follow up. In particular, it seemed as though any information that could be gleaned by the other "survivors" of Phoenix would be quite useful, and he wrote a brief message demanding any answers that could be achieved.

Beyond that, though, as he pondered his next move and worked on refining the idea that had come to him, he watched the two mammals sitting in front of him. The fox seemed, if anything, more affected by Cencerro's bizarre death; Totchli had the look of a mammal impatiently waiting for an order. He thought he knew exactly the order she needed, and so he set his pen down and looked up.

"I think the queen and the princess will be quite interested in speaking with you," Bogo said to her, and he couldn't help but enjoy the simple wonder and pleasure that spread across Totchli's face.

It was nice, in such dangerous times, to have those reminders that some mammals gave the royal family the proper respect. "And congratulating you on your promotion, of course."

"My promotion, sir?" Totchli said, and Bogo noted that the insides of her ears were flushing.

"Yes, Commandant Totchli, your promotion."

Promoting her immediately to lieutenant might have been reward enough, except that the idea that had formed in his mind required her to be of a somewhat higher rank. And if anyone complained, he was still the captain general. It wasn't as though he could lose the job a second time.

"Congratulations!" the fox said, turning to the rabbit, "No one can say you didn't earn it."

"I never could have done it without you," she said, her voice thick as she looked back at the fox.

Her eyes were beginning to look somewhat watery, and Bogo turned his attention away from the uncomfortable show of emotion to the alchemist. "Indeed not. I believe congratulations are also in order for you, Nicholas of the Middle Baronies."

The fox scratched at one ear, and Bogo did his best to keep his face neutral. The alchemist was clearly clever enough to realize that Bogo was about to do something, even if he didn't know what it was. Considering the impressive display of alchemy the work he had done healing Totchli had been, the decision Bogo had come to seemed obvious. Unprecedented problems required unprecedented solutions, after all.

"Thanks," the fox said, his tone somewhat sheepish even as Totchli beamed at him, "Just doing my part to keep Zootopia safe."

"Indeed," Bogo replied, knowing he was about to commit to his decision.

It would, perhaps, be the biggest headache he had ever made for himself, but so close to engaging the enemy he needed all the help he could get. "And you'll continue to do so," he went on.

At the fox's expression of mild confusion, Bogo leaned forward across his desk, letting his most dangerous smile creep across his face. "I'm drafting you, Captain Nicholas."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Patolli was last mentioned all the way back in chapter 1, and it is a real Aztec game of luck and strategy. Nick was notably good—or the guards he was playing against were notably bad—but Judy has never been shown playing it. Whether Bogo is right that she wouldn't be very good at gambling may be more than a little colored by his own biases.

In venomous snakes, it is often the case that younger snakes are less venomous than adults, as Bogo believes to be the case for Ehecatls. On the other hand, younger snakes are frequently more likely to inject venom than adult snakes, and to inject more of it, which can make their bites more dangerous.

The confidence trick Bogo briefly describes has a huge number of different ways it can be executed, but commonly goes something like this: one con artist approaches the victim, begging for help to find a lost item of significant value, like a ring or a necklace. The con artist eventually moves on, and a second confidence artist "finds" the lost item in front of the victim. The second con artist feigns indifference to the story the victim tells them of the first con artist who lost the item, but eventually offers to sell the item to the victim. The actual item is, naturally, cheap and nearly valueless, and the con artists pocket the victim's money. Depending on how exactly the two con artists perform the trick, the first may offer a significant reward for the return of their item, and the price that the second con artist demands of the victim is conveniently significantly less than that to motivate the victim by playing on their greed to make a profit.

This chapter indirectly suggests a reason why there are some things in the ruins under Phoenix that seem more advanced than what anyone has in the present of the story; they need philosopher's stones to power them, and those are expensive and difficult to make. While in those ruins, Judy did see a building that seemed to have been partially transmuted into sand, lending some credence as to Nick's theory for what happened to Cencerro's head.

In being promoted directly to commandant, Judy is skipping the intermediary ranks of lieutenant and captain and ends up in the rank immediately senior to Nick's newfound position as a captain and immediately junior to Cencerro's rank of lieutenant colonel.

As to why Nick comes in as a captain, I figured it made sense based on real world militaries. In many modern militaries, the rank of captain is where officers with professional credentials like a medical doctorate start, skipping the lower ranks. Considering that being an alchemist requires a great deal of study and has the potential for enormous earning as a civilian, I figured that it made sense for the City Guard to allow alchemists to skip some of the lower ranks as part of the incentive to join.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought.


	43. Chapter 43

Nick was silent for a moment after Bogo spoke, and as Judy watched him her own elation at her promotion started to fade. Judy could see his jaw working silently as he seemed to try to summon a response, and just at the point she thought he might say something that would get Bogo's temper back up again he simply sighed and shrugged his shoulders.

The gesture should have been a casual and nonchalant one, as though suddenly being the first fox to join the City Guard was no different from Bogo offering him a second canteen of water, but Judy thought she saw a certain tension in his back. "Well, I guess you've really got me over a barrel," Nick said, and there was something sharp and biting under his friendly tone, "I don't suppose I'll be able to resign when this is all over?"

Bogo seemed to be studying Nick carefully before he replied, and Judy had no idea what was going through the buffalo's head. Relief that Nick hadn't made a scene? Disappointment that he didn't seem to consider it the honor it was? Whatever the case, his words were coolly neutral. "With a full military pension, should you wish," he said.

Nick smiled, but it didn't touch his eyes. "Then let's make sure I live long enough to spend it," he said, and after a gap that struck Judy as carefully calculated to straddle the line of insubordination added, "Sir."

Bogo nodded dismissively. "I'll see to it you both receive fresh uniforms before your audience with the queen and princess," he said, rising from his desk and striding to the door of the carriage.

He paused for a moment, one massive hoof on the knob. "Don't go anywhere," he said.

"Aye sir," Nick said, giving Bogo a lazy salute at the same instant Judy replied crisply with "Yes sir."

The hint of a frown seemed to touch Bogo's features, as though he was already regretting his decision, but then his massive face became implacable once more and he was gone. Judy turned to Nick, about to ask him how he was feeling, but he spoke before she could. "Congratulations on the promotion again, Carrots," he said, and there was what seemed to Judy like genuine warmth in his voice, "You have to be the youngest commandant ever, right?"

"Actually, no," Judy replied, trying to match his cheerful tone, "Three hundred years ago, the head of the City Guard made her six year-old son a general."

Nick barked out a laugh, a smile creasing his muzzle. "My, that must have been quite the thing to see."

"It didn't work out very well," Judy admitted, which was selling the historical details a little short; that particular head of the City Guard had never had the chance to spend _her_ military pension.

"Like appointing a fox as a captain, maybe," Nick said.

"Nick..." Judy began, reaching out and grabbing his paw in hers, "You'll be great."

Judy didn't think she had ever seen him doubt himself. He was always so confident, to the point of being obnoxious at times, as though he knew that everything would work out in his favor. Even when he had told her the story of what had set him on the path of becoming an alchemist, even when he had spoken of his lost idealism and his mistakes, there hadn't been quite the sense of vulnerability.

He favored her with a weak smile, squeezing her paw. "What's a captain supposed to _do_ , anyway?" he asked.

Nick, of course, had certainly never been to the academy; he might not have ever even seen it. Judy realized just the sort of position Bogo had maneuvered Nick into; the fox had been given a job he had no idea how to perform and if he chose not to do it he'd be labeled a deserter and imprisoned. Nick's choice had been made for him, and Judy felt a touch of shame for taking so long to realize what he must have grasped instantly. Her excitement over her own promotion, at having her own abilities recognized and rewarded to such an extent, was no excuse, particularly once she began her new duties as a commandant. Whatever those ended up being.

But she could answer Nick's question, at least, for all the comfort that it would give him. "Alchemists always join the City Guard as captains," Judy said, "Most of them don't go to the academy, either. Not for all of the training, anyway."

Nick arched an eyebrow. "So I'm _not_ as special as I think I am?" he asked, and while there was his usual mocking sense of humor in his voice Judy thought there might also be some relief.

Judy laughed, rolling her eyes at him. "You're _very_ special," she said, rubbing her paw fondly along his arm, "Just not when it comes to being an alchemist in the City Guard. Normally, you'd start by being a guard at Oztoyehuatl's Jail—"

"That'd be a bit ironic," Nick interrupted, shaking his head, but Judy plowed on.

"—for at least a few months to get you trained on how the City Guard works."

"Something tells me that's not going to happen this time," Nick said.

"Probably not," Judy admitted, "Most likely you'll just be assigned to a commander as an adviser and to perform any alchemy they need done."

Nick's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "That sounds oddly cushy for a military role," he said, and Judy shrugged.

"The City Guard has a hard time recruiting alchemists," she said, and Nick nodded.

"So they make it as undemanding a job as possible," he said, "I'm not going to be very popular with the rest of the City Guard, am I?"

"Well..." Judy said, trying to hedge her words.

She had never met an alchemist who was a member of the City Guard in her brief time as a cadet and then an ensign—and now a commandant, which seemed almost impossible—but from what she had heard they were usually looked down upon as being snobby, elitist, and condescending jerks who shirked their fair share of the worst jobs that needed doing. "Ah, well, at least I'll know how to deal with that," Nick said, "If everyone started looking up to me I don't know what I'd do."

His voice had its usual good humor in its full measure, and he smiled suddenly. "Just don't ask too much of me, ma'am," he said, tipping Judy a wink.

"What are you—" Judy began to say, but Nick cut her off.

"Or should I call you 'sir?'" he continued, "See, this is the stuff you'll have to teach me as my commanding officer."

Judy simply blinked at him for a moment, and then she realized what he was getting at. Her new rank of commandant made her immediately superior to captains. And Nick was a captain. And— "You think Bogo is going to assign you to me?" she blurted, her eyes widening.

Nick's smile gained a touch of wickedness. "Why not?" he asked, "He knows we can work together. We'll just have to see how well I work... _under_ you."

He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, leaning over to all but whisper his last words in Judy's ear.

Judy felt a rising blush spread up her head and into her ears, which seemed to be burning. "Nick—" she protested, but he was put his arms on her shoulders, staring into her eyes.

"I'm yours to command, ma'am," he said, his voice full of mock solemnity, and he leaned in for a kiss.

And then the door to the carriage opened and Bogo re-entered.

Judy sat bolt upright so quickly that her chair nearly tipped over, and Nick simply straightened up in his seat as he turned to face the desk again, his paws primly folded in his lap. The smile on his face could have meant anything.

If Bogo had noticed anything he gave no sign of it, although Judy felt as though her embarrassment must have been plainly visible in the flush of her ears. "Your new uniform," Bogo said bluntly, thrusting a bulky package into Nick's paws.

He turned to Judy next, giving her a significantly smaller one. "Yours may be somewhat too large," he said.

"I can alter it if needed, sir," Nick said cheerfully.

Judy didn't believe for a moment that Nick was actually going to properly buckle down to authority, but she supposed he did have the talent for altering clothing twice over, both as a tailor and an alchemist. Bogo simply nodded. "You'll have twenty minutes to get ready," Bogo said, "I have some preparations to make."

"There's a curtain you can draw to separate the carriage," Bogo said, pointing it out, and while his words were seemingly devoid of emotion Judy couldn't help but hear an unstated "If you want to."

Still, he did leave, further cementing Judy's idea that the buffalo wasn't much of a conversationalist. Out of a sense of professionalism—and the thought of what might happen if Bogo, or even worse the queen and princess, entered the carriage to see her kissing Nick—she drew the curtain and started changing as quickly as she could. Bogo had been right that the replacement uniform was too large, but it wasn't quite as bad as it could have been. The trousers were about three inches too long and the sleeves of the tunic were similarly overlong. Her new breastplate, to Judy's great surprise, was actually perfectly sized for her, although she had expected it to be the piece that would fit worst. The package Bogo had given her hadn't included replacement rank insignia for her torc, and she supposed that her commandant emblems really would be given to her by the royal family. Otherwise, all the package had in it were her new feathered bracelets, and she put them on before calling out to Nick. "Are you changed yet?" she asked.

Nick answered by drawing the curtain back. "Red's not my color," he said, pulling at his collar, "And I don't know how you can stand these tunics."

His disdain for the uniform was obvious, but Judy couldn't help the slow smile that spread across her face. His uniform wasn't quite the same shade that most of his fur was, but it seemed to emphasize the litheness of his frame. His steel breastplate suited him far better than anything she had ever seen him wear, helping to give him a sort of seriousness he normally lacked. He looked… dignified. Commanding, like a mammal to be respected. "You look very nice," Judy said.

"That was never a question," he said, smiling, "Here, let me help you with those hems."

He rummaged through his bag on the floor of the carriage and emerged with nothing more than a needle, some thread, and something that looked like a tiny two-pronged fork. "I thought you'd use alchemy," Judy admitted as he set to work, kneeling down to tackle her trousers first.

She watched as he worked, handling his tools deftly in his paws with the speed and skill of what must have been long practice. "I'm saving my strength for that," Nick said, nodding his head in the direction of Bogo's desk.

On it, she saw, Nick had placed an unrolled piece of cloth covered with a complicated pattern, at the center of which rested his bronze torc. Off to the side was a gleaming torc of pure gold, and Judy realized that she had been paying too much attention to how well Nick's new uniform fit him to notice that he wasn't wearing one. The package Bogo had given Nick must have included a new torc appropriate for a member of the City Guard, although it was completely lacking any rank insignia. "What's wrong with the new one?" Judy asked.

"Too big," Nick said, shaking his head as he worked at his stitching; he didn't seem to even need to look at what he was doing, "Easier to just transmute mine into gold."

"But yours won't work in Zootopia," Judy protested, "And if you wear it back in it'll—"

"Yes, yes, it'll be a crime," Nick interrupted, waving her concern away, "But that gold one won't work out here anyway."

He looked up at her, smiling slightly. "But I promise I'll put it on before going back through the Middle Wall, if that helps."

"Promise?" Judy asked.

"Is that an order?"

"It is, Captain Nicholas," Judy said, enjoying the way the words sounded coming out of her mouth.

"Yes ma'am," Nick replied, and he winked as he stood up and set to work on her sleeves.

When he was done, he turned his attention back to his torc on the table. Judy had a strong suspicion that the cloth it was on was probably what he had used to make Fernanda's fake torc, considering how complicated the pattern of interlocking circles and triangles was and how difficult it must be to make a convincing fake of something as complicated as a torc with its glowing interior engravings. A thought struck her, and she asked the question that came to mind. "Are you sure you can handle doing that?" she asked before Nick could place his paws on the cloth.

"I just needed a little rest," he said, nodding, "I'll be fine for something simple like this."

He grinned suddenly. "When I got exhausted, I just passed out. You got a vision of me. You definitely got the better deal there."

"And you're sure that this... this other Nick isn't a result of you healing my arm?" Judy asked.

She wanted to believe that the vision had simply been a result of being pushed to her physical limits, as Nick had suggested in Bogo's presence. And it was true that she hadn't so much as heard Nick's voice in her head again, let alone seen the other Nick, ever since that Nick had kicked the real one in the head. "Well, pretty sure," Nick said, shrugging, "I've never heard of anything like that happening with chimeras made the usual way. But if this other Nick shows up again, ask him what my mother's name is."

"Why, what is it?"

"I've never told you that," Nick said, "That's kind of the point. If your vision knows that, then who knows?"

He spread his paws wide in an exaggerated shrug. "Maybe he is real. Otherwise, I guess that's just what happens when you're missing my charming company."

It seemed like a pretty simple way of telling whether or not the other Nick really did have reality to him, as Judy had felt that he did while talking to him. He had been so undeniably like Nick, such a perfect representation of his personality, that it felt as though he had to exist. Having a way to test that, if he ever showed up again, made Judy feel a little better. At the very least, the real Nick wasn't acting like she was crazy, and she nodded her appreciation and then stopped talking to let him concentrate.

The transmutation of Nick's bronze torc into a gold one was not particularly dramatic; he set up all of his focuses on the cloth and added a bunch of assorted junk from the bottom of his bag next to his torc. Judy supposed that it was to make up for the difference in how heavy gold was compared to bronze, and sure enough the little cracked glass vials, empty or with only a minuscule amount of contents remaining, flowed into the torc as Nick altered it. He had the torc finished and around his neck less than a minute before the door to the carriage opened again, and the actual gold torc he had been given vanished into his pack as fast as a magic trick.

Rather than Bogo, it was a pair of lieutenants who entered, carefully looked through the carriage (eyeing Nick in particular with what seemed to Judy a fair amount of suspicion) before turning and leaving. Bogo did enter next, inspecting the carriage for himself, and then he left again. When he re-entered, it was with the queen.

Judy had never expected to see either of them with her own eyes, to be so close that she would be breathing the same air. The queen didn't look quite like Judy had expected her to from official portraits, including the massive one that hung in the academy. Queen Lana was recognizable, certainly, but...

She was shorter than Judy had expected, for one thing. Perhaps it was simply that most of the portraits Judy had seen were oversized, but the queen was nowhere near a larger than life figure. And her features, which always looked so noble and purposeful in official art, struck Judy as seeming more like the kindly aunt of a sheep she had known in Totchli Barony. Even her clothes were far more modest than Judy had expected; if it hadn't been for her platinum torc, with its enormous diamond ornament that glowed with the beautifully refracting light of an alchemical torch, the queen might have looked like a well-to-do merchant.

And then the queen spoke, and her voice more than made up for Judy's disappointment with how she looked. Her voice was regal and dignified, mild and yet powerfully commanding. "Ensign Totchli, Mr. Nicholas," she said, nodding first to Judy and then to Nick, "You have shown great courage."

Judy bowed as low as she could, sparing a side-eyed glance to make sure that Nick was doing the same. "Thank you, your majesty," Judy said, and Nick repeated the words.

"Your reward, I'm afraid, is likely to be more of a burden," the queen continued, "But that is very often the nature of life. I shall be asking much more of you in your new roles."

Judy hadn't been expecting the queen to speak so bluntly, and perhaps her surprise showed because the sheep offered her a small smile. "There are some ways in which having more power means having less freedom, Ensign Totchli," the queen continued, her voice as mild as ever, "But I have enough power, at least, to speak my mind plainly. It's something I've always appreciated in Lord Bogo."

She gestured at Bogo, who bowed slightly and then, when the queen's attention had turned away from him, shot both Judy and Nick a look that seemed to promise dark things depending on what kinds of ideas they got into their heads about speaking plainly to the queen.

"I have given my daughter the honor of awarding you your new ranks," the queen continued, "It is important for a queen to appreciate her soldiers, I think."

On her words, the princess entered the carriage, and like her mother she wasn't quite what Judy had expected. Princess Isabel, at least, was significantly taller than her mother, but she didn't seem quite as at ease within her own skin. While every move that the queen made was full of an unconscious and easy grace, the princess seemed unsure of herself in some way, awkward in a way that had nothing to do with her unusual appearance. And she was unusual-looking indeed; Judy had never seen a mammal that had hooves at the ends of their legs and yet paws at the ends of their arms. Even her fur—which didn't seem to really be fur, but something part of the way between fur and wool—beneath her simple yet elegant dress was like nothing Judy had ever seen. "Thank you, mother," the princess said, and her voice was full of the awkwardness of adolescence; Judy got the sense that the princess would end up growing quite a bit taller and fill out somewhat as she aged, but for the moment she was simply somewhat lanky.

The princess carried two long wrapped bundles in one paw and two small wooden boxes in the other, which she deposited on Bogo's desk. "Ensign Totchli," the princess began, drawing herself up straighter and seeming to try to imbue her voice with some of the power of her mother, "Do you swear to serve your monarch and obey her commands?"

"I do, your majesty," Judy replied, bowing her head.

"And do you swear to serve the mammals of Zootopia, to uphold the public peace and to follow the lawful orders of the City Guard?"

"I do, your majesty," Judy said again.

"Then I hereby name you commandant of the City Guard," the princess said.

She opened one of the wooden boxes and drew from it the appropriate rank insignia, which she leaned over to apply to Judy's torc. The princess then pulled the wrappings from one of the long objects she had brought with her, and Judy saw it was the sabre that Nick had made her. "May you serve with honor," she said, and she presented Judy with the sword.

It wasn't the same oath that Judy had sworn when she had become an ensign; it was much shorter. But there was something to its simplicity that the more elaborate oath had lacked, something that had given the words far greater power. It made her proud to serve, and she couldn't help but beam as she stepped aside and watched Nick accept his enlistment into the City Guard. He glanced in her direction ever so briefly before making his first oath, but he did make both. The sabre that the princess presented him wasn't nearly as elaborate as the one that Nick had made Judy, but to her eyes it looked to be just as well made and actually seemed to be sized appropriately to him.

"We have much to discuss now," the queen said, nodding with satisfaction once Nick had accepted the blade, "Please, be seated."

The carriage was easily large enough for it, and once the queen had taken Bogo's chair behind the desk everyone else found a chair and sat down. "Now—" the queen began, but Princess Isabel interrupted her.

"Mother, there is something I wish to start with," she said.

An expression of mild surprise crossed the queen's face, but she gestured for her daughter to continue. The princess turned to face Judy, a look of wonder on her face that made her seem much younger. "Is it true that you're a chimera?" she asked, her eagerness evident in her tone.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

As was mentioned all the way back in chapter 6, the cells meant to contain alchemists in Oztoyehuatl's Jail require an alchemist to open them, and thus some of the guards are alchemists such as the deer who lets Bogo into Big's cell. Considering that the Betrayer was a fox, Nick is seeing the apparent irony in having a fox as a guard at the jail that bears Oztoyehuatl's name.

In modern militaries a male superior officer should be addressed as "sir" and a female superior officer as "ma'am," making "ma'am" the proper address for Nick to use with Judy from this point on.

The two-pronged fork that Nick uses as part of hemming Judy's clothes is a seam ripper, a real tool for pulling the stitching out of clothes.

Earlier chapter suggest that it's traditional for a mammal to purchase their own sabre upon becoming captain, but then again it's pretty clearly unusual for a member of the royal family to administer the oath. Bending tradition a bit seemed appropriate in this case.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to comment, I'd love to know what you thought!


	44. Chapter 44

Bogo knew he would never forget the first time he had met Maria. Before their marriage, she had been living in one of the more rundown neighborhoods of the Inner Baronies, barely scraping by even with three roommates and two jobs as she put herself through one of the city's most prestigious universities. He had been a freshly minted ensign in those days, so green it was a wonder he had been trusted to patrol the streets even with a partner. He had shown up to her apartment after a burglary had been reported, which wasn't unusual for that neighborhood. What _had_ been unusual was that Maria had been sitting on top of the would-be thief, twisting his arm behind his back, and sporting a black eye induced by her torc that perfectly matched the one on that poor dingo's face. "It certainly took long enough for the City Guard to show up," had been the first words she had ever said to him.

He had been smitten instantly.

Maria had consumed his thoughts for the following week, his desire to speak with her again warring with the part of himself that said it wouldn't be proper to do so. His partner had gotten sick of it, telling him in a way that was only half-joking that he wasn't the first mammal to have ever fallen in love and he should get over himself. Still, when Maria had found him on one of his patrols and asked him out to dinner, that same partner had clapped Bogo on the shoulder and told him to never let her go.

What it all amounted to, in Bogo's mind, was that he knew what young love looked like. He knew how it felt to feel as though you had some incredible connection to another mammal that no one else did, to feel as though you could bear any suffering so long as you had them by your side. He knew how infatuation could give way to something deeper and more powerful that could last an entire lifetime no matter what came in the way.

What he didn't know was what Totchli saw in the fox.

There was no doubt in his mind that the two of them had been about to kiss when he walked in on them, and as the princess excitedly chatted with Totchli and marveled over her left arm Bogo let the words slide past his conscious mind and studied his newest captain carefully. It really was a remarkable bit of alchemy for someone who had never been apprenticed by the Alchemist Guild, and he wondered how Nicholas had achieved such mastery. The fox's face was a mask of polite interest, as if sitting across from the queen and the princess was an everyday occurrence. If Bogo's scrutiny bothered him, he didn't show it at all, and Bogo couldn't help but think ahead to the conversation they would have to have about Alfonso.

"—isn't that right, Lord Bogo?"

Bogo was suddenly jolted out of his own thoughts by the queen's words, and his head snapped up to her. He had completely missed the thread of whatever she had been saying until the mention of his own name brought him back to awareness, and he went with the only safe response. "Absolutely, your majesty."

"I'm sure Commandant Totchli will be happy to spend more time with you later," the queen said to her daughter, the words warm and gentle, "But I'm afraid now isn't the time."

From the way the princess's ears drooped slightly, blood rushing to fill them, Bogo thought the princess was more embarrassed than the mild rebuke deserved. But then, the princess was caught at a delicate time in the life of any mammal, no longer a child yet not quite an adult. There was no doubt in his mind that the princess was eager to prove herself worthy of those adult burdens, and similarly no doubt that her youth had largely been a lonely one. In retrospect, it was little wonder that she had latched onto a mammal that doubtlessly represented to the princess everything she wished to be herself. Brave, skilled, endlessly devoted to Zootopia... and a chimera on top of all that.

If only Totchli had better taste in her mates.

Bogo pushed the thought aside and repressed the urge to sigh; he'd be happy if the royal family—and Zootopia—was around long enough for the princess to start developing an interest in romance, even if that meant having her rebel against the idea of a political marriage. It was the sort of problem he would have happily traded for; dealing with a heartbroken or infatuated princess sounded far easier that the current mess he was in.

He realized with a start that everyone in the room was looking at him, and he coughed, internally cursing the way his thoughts increasingly seemed to wander away from him. "It will be some time before we know exactly how Diego Cencerro died," he began, "But alchemy seemed to be involved. Captain Nicholas, if you wouldn't mind sharing your observations?"

Clearly the queen had expected him to provide a report, and from the way she eased ever so slightly back into her chair to listen Bogo knew that he had taken the correct approach. As Bogo turned to look at the fox himself, he forced himself to pay attention to the words as well as the mammal speaking them; there was no telling what he might have missed about Totchli with his attention distracted. "I'm not sure how much Lord Bogo already told you, your majesties," he said smoothly, giving a brief and yet ever so polite glance in Bogo's direction; the fox was certainly a sharp one.

Bogo inclined his head a fraction of an inch in acknowledgement and continued, his words as honeyed as they had been before. Whatever else Bogo could say about the fox, he had to grudgingly admit he had a real talent for appearing sincere. "He was acting very odd, though. He acted like he didn't recognize Captain Totchli here and said she had to be a fake. He said the same about me, and we've known each other for years."

"Is that so?" the queen interjected, "How did you know him?"

Her tone betrayed nothing, but Bogo thought he saw the signs of great scrutiny in her eyes. "I've done alchemy contracts in Phoenix for years, your majesty," Captain Nicholas said, his response almost instant, "I've had to report into the City Guard outpost there before."

The queen simply nodded and rolled her hoof for him to continue. "Then he said something about seeing the bigger picture. There was kind of a popping noise and all the bones in his head turned to sand," Nicholas finished.

"That certainly sounds like alchemy," the queen observed, "And you were the only alchemist in the carriage?"

Nicholas simply smiled at her. Bogo got the idea it was far from the first time he had been questioned, and he obviously knew how to manage himself. A different mammal might already be cracking under the pressure of the implied threat that the queen represented, but at least outwardly the fox was the picture of calm confidence. Bogo knew the queen didn't seriously suspect him of wrongdoing, but was simply trying to get his measure, and it seemed that Nicholas was well aware of that. "Your majesty, he didn't do it!" Commandant Totchli suddenly blurted, horror etched into her features, "Tell her about—"

Bogo cleared his throat and the rabbit fell quiet. "I was the only alchemist in the carriage, yes," Nicholas said, sparing a quick glance at Totchli that Bogo supposed might have been meant to be reassuring, "But my theory is that Cencerro was either murdered or committed suicide with an artifact from Quimichpatlan Barony."

As the fox explained himself with a confident air, speaking of the things that had been pulled out of the ruins from beneath Phoenix and the need for a philosopher's stone to use them, Bogo spared a glance at the princess. She was watching the fox with an air of rapt interest, clearly fascinated by the idea of adventuring into dangerous ruins and recovering valuable treasures. Nicholas was, Bogo had to admit, an excellent story teller, and unlike most alchemists who seemed to delight in speaking on the subject in an incomprehensible manner he related his knowledge in rather simple terms.

"To summarize, then," the queen said once he had finished, "Either a master of the Alchemist Guild or someone with the wealth to buy a philosopher's stone supplied this artifact to Cencerro."

Her smile was tired. "I can see how this doesn't narrow your suspects down any, Lord Bogo," she said, and Bogo nodded.

"And your other plan has yet to produce any results," she continued.

Bogo wasn't sure whether he should be pleased about that or not. Trying to trick one of his three primary suspects into revealing their intents by giving them an opportunity to strike at the princess had yet to result in anything, and Bogo didn't know whether that meant that his plan had been seen through, they all really were innocent, or that an attack was yet to come. And in the meantime, his forces were advancing ever closer to Phoenix, their pace so rapid that it'd only be about another six or seven hours before they arrived.

"No, your majesty," he said.

The queen stood with the commanding air of having made a decision. "I will be very interested to see how Lady Cencerro reacts to the news of her cousin's death," she said, "As well as that of my other advisers. However, I believe this presents a unique opportunity."

"Your majesty?" Totchli asked.

Bogo thought he understood the direction the queen's thoughts were going. "Diego Cencerro is no longer able to contradict anything we might claim he said," Bogo said, and the queen nodded with a satisfied air.

"Perhaps one of them can be goaded into making a mistake," the queen said, "Lord Bogo, I would ask you to make arrangements for the two of us to speak with each of them individually."

"Mother—" the princess began, but the queen cut her off.

"I know you want to be involved, dear. I would much rather have you with me and your safety assured. But there is something rather important that only you can do, and you can't be with me to do it."

"Bait," the princess said, lowering her head, "You need me to be bait."

Commandant Totchli looked shocked. Captain Nicholas had something in his eyes, although Bogo couldn't say what it was. Surprise, perhaps, or maybe disapproval. "I am afraid so, my dear," the queen said, "But you will not be alone in your carriage this time. Commandant Totchli and Captain Nicholas will be your personal guards."

The princess seemed caught between surprise and delight and a certain adolescent sulkiness at being sent away. The reactions of the fox and the rabbit were far less ambiguous; Totchli's entire body went rigid, her ears going upright, and even Nicholas shifted in his chair, his eyes widening.

Bogo was sure his own reaction at the queen's decision was just as easy for her to read, because she inclined her head slightly in his direction. "They have proven their loyalty more than any of your other guards," she said, "I should not like to take any chances."

Bogo bit back the argument he wished to make and simply nodded. "As you command, your majesty," he said.

The queen embraced her daughter, murmuring a goodbye in her ear, and then dismissed her and her two new guards. Once he was alone in his carriage with the queen, she turned back to him. "Say it, Lord Bogo," she said, "I know you don't approve."

"With respect, your majesty, you are placing an extraordinary amount of trust in the two of them," he said, "Trust that may not be earned."

The queen sighed, and when she sank back down into her chair it seemed as though the weight of the world was on her shoulders. "I don't trust either of them, not fully," she said, "And that's exactly why I sent them off with my daughter."

"Your majesty?" Bogo asked.

"I've given them the perfect opportunity to attempt something, should they be involved," she said, "And I made sure they're aware of my suspicions of my advisers. They have enough information, in other words, to believe they could succeed, but not enough to know of your own precautions when it comes to the guards outside my daughter's carriage."

Bogo sat back down himself, the true importance of the queen's words sinking in. "You believe that they might try killing your daughter and you're putting them all together despite that," he said.

The queen looked up at Bogo, her eyes full of anguish. "Does that make me a bad mother, Lord Bogo? I'm gambling with my daughter's life with little more than my impression of those two to go on."

"If it was my daughter, I would not have done it," Bogo said bluntly.

The queen seemed to sag further in her chair, and she favored Bogo with a weak smile. "There are times—very rarely, but there are times—when I don't appreciate your honesty, Lord Bogo," she said at last.

"If you always did as I recommended, you wouldn't be queen," Bogo said.

Her smile became a touch more genuine at his words. "Which I suppose is your way of saying that you'll support my decisions even when you disagree with them," she said.

"It is my duty, your majesty," Bogo replied, and for the queen he made an effort to try putting some kind of warmth into the words.

It was the simple truth that he didn't agree with her plan. He didn't trust Nicholas anywhere near enough to be comfortable with him near the princess; he had hoped to use his power as the head of the fox's chain of command to keep him on a tight leash, where he could be carefully supervised rather than enjoying the freedom of a civilian. Instead, the queen had decided to trust what seemed like her gut feeling based on little more than his report to her and a few minutes of talking with Nicholas directly. But he had raised his concerns and she had rejected them; all that there was left to do was to ensure that he did his best in seeing her will carried out. There was, however, one more objection he felt it was his duty to raise.

"The princess seemed to be enjoying the company of Commandant Totchli," Bogo said, "She may tell Totchli about the additional security arrangements."

"She won't," the queen said, "I warned her not to when I said goodbye."

Bogo nodded, and the tightness in his gut seemed to loosen a little. Not much, but some. "Then I suppose we can move on, your majesty," he said, and the queen nodded, wordlessly accepting his desire to move on to the next topic they had to discuss.

"The order we speak to them in concerns me," she said, smoothly transitioning to the question of her advisers, "If they're aware that we've already spoken to another one of them, the trap will be obvious."

"There are ways around that," Bogo began, but the queen cut him off.

"There are, but none of them are certain to work," she said firmly, "The only certainty is that whoever we speak with first will have no way of knowing our intentions. The second and third mammal we speak with may. Therefore, what it comes down to is this: of my three advisers, who do you think is the most likely to be guilty?"

It was a question that Bogo had considered at length, and now he considered it again. Lady Cencerro had the obvious connection to Diego Cencerro, as they shared a blood relation. It didn't seem so difficult to believe that, if any mammal could convince the former lieutenant colonel to go along with a treasonous scheme it would be his own relative. Conversely, the connection was so obvious that it seemed almost like the sort of thing someone else might have done for its potential to frame the ewe. After all, her cousin being guilty of treason would call Lady Cencerro's own loyalties into question, and even if she was completely exonerated of being involved, the taint of it would stick to her, perhaps for the rest of her life. The lesser nobles of the court would likely keep their distance for years, unwilling to go along with her plans and proposals out of the simple fear of guilt by association. After all, if it came out months or years after the fact that Lady Cencerro had been involved, their own positions would be seriously jeopardized.

It was the sort of move that didn't seem beneath Lord Corazón; he seemed practically to ooze false sincerity, and Bogo had never known how much of his political grandstanding was genuine belief and how much of it was simply his efforts to amass power. If the lion had been involved, deftly shifting suspicion onto his sometime ally and sometime rival seemed exactly the sort of calculated maneuver he would make. But then there was the matter of Jaime of Tecuani Barony, the prince consort's younger brother and one of the would-be assassins of the princess. Lord Corazón had been one of the prince consort's greatest friends and supporters before his tragic death, and the two predators had that apparent shared love in common. Certainly it seemed possible for them to have started scheming together in that regard, even if Jaime's apparent hatred of the princess as a half-breed freak didn't seem to align with Corazón's public persona. The lion's championing of the cause of greater privileges and rights for all the citizens of the kingdom wasn't limited merely to smaller mammals; he had also touched upon the subject of the treatment of chimeras. But that just led right back around into Bogo's suspicions of Corazón's sincerity; it wasn't as though Bogo knew Corazón's heart.

Last of all the advisers, though, was Cerdo. The pig had been the first to challenge Bogo's desire for more officers immediately before the attacks on the princess started, but he had also been the first to volunteer his own trained soldiers to add to the City Guard's strength. He was frequently in conflict with Cencerro and Corazón both, compared to how the lion and the sheep occasionally worked together, which did throw some suspicion on him. Unless, of course, Cencerro and Corazón were working together. But for all his pomposity, the pig was also capable of seemingly genuine moments of admitting his mistakes and exposing his vulnerabilities, much as Totchli had. Cerdo had freely admitted he had been wrong to oppose Bogo's request for additional officers, and the spectacularly poor timing of it did lend some credence to the idea that he wasn't involved. So too had he been the only one of the queen's council to admit to his cowardice when Jaime had made a second attack on the princess, cowering in fear for his own life rather than trying to save the royal family. He had missed the opportunity to play hero, as Cencerro had when her troops had captured Jaime in the first place, and if he was trying to draw suspicion away from himself he was doing so in a way that was ruinous to his own political aspirations.

Sifting through it all, though, there was one name that seemed to bubble to the top of Bogo's mind.

"Corazón," Bogo said at last, "We'll start with Corazón."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

I don't have too much to add in terms of author's notes for this chapter. Considering the length of this story and how long ago some events happened in terms of when chapters were posted, I figured it was worthwhile to include something of a recap of what Bogo found suspicious about each of the queen's advisers as he works to trap them.

I did, however, have the opportunity to work in something of a minor pun that took some setup; as mentioning when Corazón first appeared, the word "Corazón" is Spanish for "heart" and thus "Corazón's heart" is a weak play on words.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought.


	45. Chapter 45

The royal carriage was opulent beyond anything Judy had ever seen. No part of it had been too small or insignificant to lavish with extraordinary detail, from the carpet underfoot that was woven with a series of nesting floral patterns to the elegantly filigreed wooden panels that made up the walls. The low table at the center of the space must have had its detailing carved by mice, because Judy didn't think there could have been any other species that would have been capable of such minute and laboriously precise work. Even the plush benches that sat on either side of the table could have been thrones, the cushioning so thick that Judy's feet dangled off the floor once she had taken a seat as the princess indicated. The carriage must have been worth more than her entire family's estate, noble though it was, and Judy had never felt more awkwardly out of place than she did sitting there.

Nick sat on the bench next to her as though none of it impressed him.

If it had been a few days earlier Judy might have felt a stab of envy at his ability to handle any situation he found himself in as though it had been exactly what he had planned for, but she thought she knew him well enough to know that he was actually just as awed as she was. He was just better at hiding it, that was all. Still, if he was even a little afraid of appearing like an idiot in front of his monarch, he didn't show so much as the slightest sign of it.

"That's a very clever solution, Captain Nicholas," the princess said, nodding approvingly, "I've never heard of an alchemist trying anything similar."

The princess had eagerly drawn Nick into a conversation about alchemy as they walked over to the carriage, and Judy had done her best to seem thoughtful and attentive despite it sounding like they were speaking a different language. Most of it made absolutely no sense to her, and they didn't seem to be using the words she _did_ know in their usual fashion.

Nick flashed the princess his most dazzling smile, and shrugged modestly. "That's very kind of you to say so, your majesty," he said, "And dare I ask if you're an alchemist yourself?"

The princess laughed a little at that, and it was her turn to modestly wave the compliment away. "Certainly not!" she said, "But the royal library has many books on alchemy and I can't help but read them. It's all so interesting!"

She sighed suddenly. "They're my second favorite books," the princess added, and her enthusiasm faded, tinged by melancholy.

That, at least, was something that Judy could contribute to, and she jumped on the conversational opening. "What kind of books are your favorites?" she asked, and despite her genuine interest in lending the princess the sympathetic ear she seemed to need Judy hoped that it wasn't mathematics.

The princess fidgeted with her paws, so curiously mismatched from her hooved feet, for an instant before responding. "It's... childish, perhaps," she admitted, her eyes and ears low, "But I've always loved the old stories of adventure. I used to dream of going to the Outer Baronies, and even beyond, myself, but... not like this."

She took in their royal surroundings with a single vague gesture. "It wouldn't be responsible for the princess to travel alone," she said, and the bright cheerfulness in her voice struck Judy as woefully forced, "And I must be responsible, of course."

It suddenly occurred to Judy that the carriage they sat in was very nearly the equal of the prison she and Nick had escaped. If the princess demanded that the guards outside the door turn the carriage around and head back to the palace, would they actually do so?

"It feels as though the gods have seen fit to honor my prayers in their own peculiar way," the princess continued, "Though now I would give anything, even if it meant staying in the palace my entire life and never leaving, if it meant my subjects would be safe."

Judy had no idea what to say to that, and from a quick glance at Nick she thought she saw a confusion that mirrored her own in his eyes. Nick, she knew, wasn't a noble, and while he might have worked for nobles at one time or another she doubted he could understand the terrible burden that family heirs were under. In her case, it was simply the luck of the order she had been born in that she would not inherit the Totchli Barony and was free to pursue her dream of joining the City Guard. She couldn't help but think of what her life might have been had she been the eldest of her siblings. An arranged marriage, as soon as she came of age, after a lifetime of preparation to join two families as smoothly as possible. The matter of running the day-to-day duties of the household would be hers to share with whatever husband her parents found, and together they would have seen to the concerns of the lesser holdings and commoners of the barony. She would have certainly been expected to produce an heir and more than one spare, as her own mother had, and see to raising all of her kits.

It sounded awful.

The princess, at least, wasn't betrothed to anyone so far as Judy knew—and considering that it would be a major piece of news, she was fairly confident that the princess wasn't—and being the queen's successor meant she would be running the entire kingdom rather than simply a minor barony, but she wouldn't have traded places with the princess for anything in the world. Still, she couldn't help but admire the nobility of the princess's words. Whatever her own dreams for her life were, the princess seemed honor-bound to fulfill her duties.

"That's a terrible burden you carry, your majesty," Judy said at last.

Her words sounded horribly hollow to her own ears, a simple and empty platitude. But the princess nodded appreciatively, and she looked Judy in the eyes. "Thank you, commandant," she said quietly, and she fell silent.

The moment dragged out slowly, the only sound the barely audible creaking and shaking of the carriage as it moved along, and just as Judy feared that the princess would not speak again until they were relieved she suddenly sat up a little straighter. "But that's quite enough of my own problems," she said, and while the words were quite adult in tone Judy thought she was hearing an echo of something the queen must have told the princess, or perhaps told her frequently, "Would you indulge me, Commandant Totchli? I would like to hear of your own adventure, in your words."

Judy eagerly did as she had been asked, and found the experience of recounting her experience quite different from telling it to Captain General Bogo. Perhaps it was simply that she had already done it once before, and had practice in that regard. Perhaps it was that the princess was a far more empathetic audience than Bogo and his implacable face, gasping and going wide-eyed at the right moments. Or perhaps it was simply having Nick—the real Nick, rather than one that lived in her head and no one else could see—to jump in and add his perspective.

But whatever the case, it was far easier to tell the story the second time, and when she had finished, Judy gratefully accepted the cup of water the princess offered her from an elegant carafe. As the water, cool and with a hint of cucumber flavor, washed against her parched mouth she watched the princess consider the story in its entirety. The princess had seemed alternatively delighted and impressed, her expressions so much easier to read than Bogo's, but Judy couldn't help but wonder if she had caught on to what she had left out. Just as had been the case with Bogo, it hadn't felt right to speak about what Nick had told her as she drifted in and out with venom coursing through her veins, to say nothing of actually kissing him. But then, Bogo seemed practically carved out of stone, so generally unemotional—except anger, so far as she could tell—that Judy couldn't possibly imagine him in a relationship of his own. He seemed more the sort that filled his life with nothing but work, training, and sleep. _Just like I used to_ , a thought crept uncomfortably into Judy's head.

She pushed the thought aside. Speaking with the captain general about her love life ranked as about the thing she wanted to do least, but the omission seemed more egregious when it came to Princess Isabel. "If you weren't sitting before me, I would have guessed you could never have made it out alive," the princess said, sighing a little, "I'm sure it must have been terrifying in the moment, and you probably never want to go through anything like that again, but it's very nearly like one of the stories from those old books."

The princess laughed, and the sound was almost musical. "Why, if only there was a romance it would fit right in!"

Judy choked on her water, but Nick was about as unflappable as ever, laughing heartily at the princess's comment. "Reality does sometimes fail to live up to our expectations," he said, smiling, "Sometimes, but not always. Isn't that right, Commandant Totchli?"

It was all Judy could do to nod, trying not to show anything on her face, but the princess thankfully moved on. "But may I ask what made you persevere?" she said, "What kept you from giving up?"

"It needed to be done, your majesty," Judy answered without thinking.

Before she had earned her commission, if Judy had been asked why she wanted to join the City Guard the answer would have been a simple one: she wanted to do her part to keep the kingdom safe and help make it better. It was the truth, although she would have been lying if she had said that she didn't care about achieving recognition or glory as a guardsmammal. But from the moment Cencerro had trapped her in that prison, she had never stopped pushing to make it out and provide a warning because it did need to be done and she and Nick were the only ones in any position to do so.

The princess nodded approvingly. "You're exactly the sort of mammal the City Guard needs, Commandant Totchli," she said, "Tell me, are you married?"

Of all the questions the princess could have asked, Judy wasn't sure there was one she could have expected least. "No, your majesty," she said.

"Nor engaged to be married?"

"No, your majesty," Judy repeated.

"Ah," the princess said, "I admit, I somewhat hoped you would be able to tell me more about marriage. I'm afraid everyone only tells me about the positive parts. It will be time to choose a husband soon, you see."

Considering how the princess had commented on how the old stories she loved included romance, and taking into account her later comments, Judy thought she understood a bit more where the princess was coming from. It would be the princess's duty to not only rule Zootopia itself, but also for the kingdom to survive her own rule. It didn't seem surprising, then, that everyone the princess knew would speak to her about marriage in only the most glowing of terms. "What about you, Captain Nicholas?" the princess asked, turning to face Nick.

"I'm afraid I'm of no help there, your majesty," Nick said, a slight smile touching his lips.

"I don't wish to be rude," the princess said, her words becoming somewhat more hesitant, "Nor to pry. But I have heard that commoners may take... certain liberties before marriage that the nobility don't."

It took Judy a moment to realize what the princess was delicately asking Nick and she felt her ears burning crimson. "I suspect that the nobility take those liberties the same as commoners, your majesty," Nick said.

"But it is a scandal when they do and it becomes known," the princess said, and Nick nodded to concede the point, "Is it the same for commoners?"

"I've never taken those liberties myself, if that is what your majesty is asking," Nick replied.

Judy saw the insides of the princess's ears flush and watched as she stammered out an apology in a rather un-princess like fashion. "I— I do apologize, Captain Nicholas. I ended up being quite rude after all."

Judy couldn't help but gape in surprise. Not because of what she had learned about Nick—she had suspected that he had never allowed himself to get particularly close to anyone following his mistreatment as a kit and she certainly didn't believe that commoners were somehow automatically morally inferior to nobles—but because the princess had apologized to him. Her own family, and the mammals of Totchli Barony in general, were quite a bit more lax when it came to the rules of polite society than anyone Judy had met from the Inner Baronies, and she had always assumed that the royal family would be the perfect example of following protocol. Nick seemed very nearly as surprised as she was, though he hid it better, and he hastily waved the apology away. "No, no, I am the one who should be apologizing, your majesty. I—"

"Spoke plainly and simply," the princess interrupted, and a hint of a smile came to her face, "It is rare for mammals to do so in my presence."

She fell silent again, but there was a kind of contentedness to it that made it so it wasn't awkward. Unless Judy was very much off the mark—and she did have to admit she didn't always interpret things correctly—the princess was enjoying their company, and that in and of itself was a touch sad, that she didn't seem to have any friends to relate to. From everything the princess had said, Judy couldn't help but wonder if the princess was somewhat jealous of her.

"If I may be so bold, and hopefully far less rude," the princess said eventually, "There is something else I would ask of you, Commandant Totchli."

"Anything, your majesty," Judy said promptly.

"You see," the princess began slowly as she stood and walked over to one wall of the carriage, "I have begun to learn the art of fencing."

She pressed one paw against a panel, and a cunningly concealed cabinet popped open, revealing a number of gleaming sabres. Sabres which were, Judy realized with a start, identical to the one Nick had been presented with upon being given his rank; Nick's sabre must have once belonged to the princess herself. "But besides my fencing master, there is no one who will practice with me," the princess said, and then she added with a rueful laugh, "Or at least no one who will not simply let me win."

The princess drew forth one of the blades, and Judy saw that its edge was completely blunt, although some of the other sabres looked wickedly sharp. "I think I would learn better against a real opponent, if you would agree to fight me with all your strength."

"It would be my honor, your majesty," Judy said, bowing her head.

"Wonderful!" the princess said, her smile seeming completely genuine, "You may consider it a royal command not to go easy on me."

Judy was about to reply when the handle of the door into the carriage jiggled and there was suddenly a booming series of knocks as whoever was on the other side realized it was locked.

"Your majesty, please, you must open the door!"

The voice coming from the other side of the carriage door was high and tense with anxiety, and Judy could see the door—at least three inches thick and solidly built—shake with the frantic pounding. Judy half-rose from her seat on the bench, turning to face the door, but the princess made no move from where she stood by the cabinet, a sabre still in her paws. Was it a trick? Someone trying to lure the princess out? Judy didn't recognize the voice, and she searched the princess's face for so much as a glimmer of recognition. She saw nothing, the chimera's face frozen and her eyes wide as the frantic knocking continued.

"What— What is it?" the princess asked at last, her voice betraying a quavering thread of fear.

"It's the queen, your majesty. Please, you must come at once!"

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

This chapter was a fun opportunity to get a bit more into the princess's head, as Bogo never really spent time with her alone and even if he had she probably wouldn't have opened up to him quite so much as she does to Nick and Judy.

In this chapter, Judy's thoughts reveal a bit more about the carriage beyond what Bogo noted; I figure she's more prone to being awed by the opulence of royal settings than he is.

It's one of the symptoms of jargon for any profession that it can be so dense it sounds unintelligible to anyone who doesn't know it; considering that alchemy in this universe covers things we would explain with chemistry I don't think it should be too surprising that Judy can't follow what Nick and the princess are saying. For her part, the princess has previously shown her interest in alchemy as indicated by her fondness for the court alchemist Tomas.

When thinking of what her life might have been had she been the eldest in her family, Judy obliquely references the common idea of the "heir and the spare." That is, that a noble family will produce an eldest child who is expected to take over, and a second child who is only around in case something happens to the first. There are a fair number of kings who were second sons, their older brother having died in one way or another, but it's a rather difficult position to be in. At least for royalty, the "spare" can't do anything to embarrass their older brother, but also can't do anything that makes them appear more worthy or otherwise a threat. Given that Judy has pretty consistently shown that she never expects to inherit the family barony, I've assumed that she has enough older siblings that it'd take something disastrous for her to be at the top of the line of succession.

Judy is kind of wildly off the mark when it comes to Bogo and relationships, as his chapters have hopefully shown that he does indeed care quite deeply for his wife, but considering his relative stoicism I figure it's an understandable mistake for her to make.

As has been previously mentioned, nobles are not supposed to apologize to commoners for anything, making it surprising to both Nick and Judy when the princess apologizes to Nick for probing at a very personal topic. I figure that for this setting, more European-style rules are in play for marriage, although the Aztecs did practice polygamy for nobles while it was either uncommon or completely banned for commoners; it's unclear from the historical record which it was or if that changed one way or the other at some point. Considering that the city-state was taken over, however, I figured it made more sense for that to be one of the practices that stopped beginning with the reign of King Oveja I.

Bogo did observe the princess practicing at fencing earlier, and here we see that she takes it seriously enough to want to get better at it. And that she's afraid opponents let her win, which seems a reasonable fear for a princess to have.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought.


	46. Chapter 46

"I must say, Lord Bogo, I'm quite happy to see that you trust me so much," Corazón said as he took his seat.

Bogo simply looked at the lion for a moment, but there wasn't the slightest hint of sarcasm in either his words or his face. Corazón seemed entirely sincere, and as he watched the lion settled more comfortably into his chair with an air of perfectly calm relaxation. "I don't follow," Bogo said.

A slight smile touched Corazón's features. "Come now," he said, "The three of us are alone in this carriage. Between myself, Lady Cencerro, and Lord Cerdo, I'm certainly the most physically capable. If I did wish to harm the queen—and I don't—you wouldn't be able to stop me. What else can that be besides trust?"

Bogo kept his face as neutral as he could, trying to puzzle out the meaning behind Corazón's words. Was he making a subtle threat? Simply mocking Bogo, needling him for his failures in front of the queen? Or was the lion actually arrogant enough to believe he stood a chance in a fight?

His musings were interrupted by the queen coughing politely. "I certainly hope we need never learn which of you would prevail," she said smoothly, "But Lord Bogo has my full confidence."

Corazón leaned forward slightly. "Even after what can be generously described as repeated failures?" he asked, looking right at the queen.

 _He's going on the attack_ , Bogo thought to himself. It was interesting, and not quite what he had expected. An aggressive posture meant one of two things in Bogo's mind, and that was true whether it was a desperate criminal lunging at an officer of the City Guard or a noble twisting under royal scrutiny. Either the mammal on the attack was absolutely confident that they would win—and despite torcs, he had seen the results of plenty of criminals who thought themselves incapable of overpowering a guardsmammal—or it was because attacking was their only remaining option.

Corazón was trying to grab control of the conversation, trying to put words in the queen's mouth and lead discussion away from himself and onto Bogo, of that Bogo was certain. But as to what it meant, he wasn't confident yet. "Yes," the queen said simply.

Corazón frowned and shifted back in his chair slightly, but his posture become no more deferential. "Surely, your majesty, you must know that mammals are wondering why the capable captain general has not gotten to the bottom of the matter yet," he said, and he spread his paws in an expansive gesture, "There is talk of him being involved."

That, Bogo was sure, had been a deliberate slight. He wondered if Corazón suspected that, even as they spoke, his personal belongings were being carefully searched by a few of the mammals in the City Guard Bogo trusted most, each one watching over another for added scrutiny. Certainly he had not simply invited Corazón into the queen's carriage the instant after the princess had left; he had spent some time carefully working out his strategy before putting it into motion and had the lion searched prior to being admitted. That Corazón was acting as though it was a simple social call to go before the queen and the head of the City Guard with no other mammals present certainly said something about him, but Bogo wasn't sure what it was. Desperation or confidence? He didn't know which would be worse.

The queen smiled politely, her own face the picture of neutrality. "Of course there is," she said, "Anyone close to me or the princess is not above scrutiny. Why, I do not doubt that there are some mammals who say _I_ am trying to kill my own daughter, and spinning the most outrageous and insulting motives possible. That I am jealous of her, perhaps, or have always harbored a secret hatred for chimeras."

Her words were even, but a coldness crept into Queen Lana's eyes that struck Bogo as particularly dangerous. "When I hear such rumors," she continued, "I wonder at the motives of the mammals who spread them."

She folded her hooves primly in her laps and fell silent, seeming to scrutinize Corazón without doing anything as obvious as stare at him. The lord did, at least, have the good sense to look somewhat abashed. "Certainly, your majesty," he said, but his words were not hasty; if anything he had allowed the pause to be deliberately drawn out, "A wise course of action for any rumor."

He bowed his head slightly, and then looked back up at her. Bogo had positioned himself on the queen's right side, facing Corazón, and he studied the lion's face as carefully as he could without being obvious about it. "I asked you here for you to answer some questions," Bogo said, bluntly shifting the conversation back to his own intended route.

"Anything I can do to help your investigation, Lord Bogo," Corazón said agreeably, and then he glanced briefly at the queen and added, "Anything your majesty requests."

Bogo let the implied insult pass unremarked; if Corazón was hoping to get him angry and force him to say something he hadn't meant to he'd end up sorely disappointed. After Captain Nicholas, a fox of all mammals who had never even met Bogo before that day, had managed to get beneath his skin Bogo knew he couldn't afford another outburst of emotion. He pushed his rising anger down and continued on as though Corazón had remained silent. "Diego Cencerro is dead," Bogo said.

Corazón's face shifted into an appropriate mask of surprise. Perhaps _too_ perfect, though. There was no question in Bogo's mind that Corazón's had a loathsome talent for apparent sincerity, but the lion's shock seemed almost grotesque to his eyes. "What?" Corazón said, "How could that have happened? Was it another assassin?"

His eyes darted around the room theatrically, as though there would be a blood-stained corpse he hadn't previously noticed just lying around. "His last words were particularly interesting," Bogo plunged on, deliberately ignoring Corazón's questions, "He said you were his co-conspirator in his plot."

It was a lie, of course, but no less useful for that. Corazón's response was a touch more genuine-looking than his surprise at the sheep's death; the lion's ears pressed back against his skull and his jaw fell slack, his noble features suddenly almost comically foolish with real surprise. "That's... That's absurd," Corazón protested, and while his voice was as rich as ever there was the slightest note of panic in it.

Whether that was because he was being falsely accused or because he thought the game was lost was another question entirely, and Bogo pressed his advantage, taking an almost savage pleasure in doing so. Lords of the court like Corazón seemed to delight in playing their word games, scoring slights in language so carefully chosen as to plausibly deny any deliberate intent, but Bogo was an experienced interrogator. "Is it?" Bogo asked, and then he pulled the book Totchli had recovered from Cencerro's office from an interior pocket of his uniform tunic. It was small in his massive hoof, but the contents were no less distinctive for that when he pulled it open to fan the pages before the lion, "We have the code book. You've been in touch with Cencerro long before this all started."

It had been at the queen's suggestion, as they had gone over their roles prior to bringing Corazón in, that Bogo had said "long before." It was, Queen Lana had said, appropriately vague to imply they knew more than they actually did, but not specific enough to let Corazón know that they knew less than they wanted him to think. If Bogo had said "weeks" when it had been months, or maybe even years, Corazón might have been tipped off. "Your majesty, please," Corazón said, rising to stand and face the queen.

He pushed a paw to his chest pleadingly, his tail lashing from side to side in agitation. "You cannot—"

"Sit. Down," the queen ordered, the full force of her authority in those two words uttered no louder than she normally spoke.

Corazón stumbled back into his seat, sitting so heavily it was as though he was a puppet with the strings cut. His nostrils flared with each breath, and Bogo wondered if he was at last seeing a genuine reaction or if it was simply a testament to Corazón's skill as an actor. "You say you aren't a co-conspirator of Cencerro," Bogo said slowly, drawing the words out.

"By all the gods I swear I'm not!" Corazón replied, and his voice almost broke, "I don't even know what you've accused Cencerro of doing."

He seemed entirely stripped away of his normal air of power, desperate to avoid punishment. But then, treason was a serious charge and it was true that the only mammals who had heard the testimonies of Tochtli and Nicholas were the queen, the princess, and himself. An innocent mammal, believing that Cencerro had nobly held the line for as long as he could against a barbarian horde, would indeed be surprised by the turn of events.

And a guilty mammal would be equally vehement in his denials.

"Can you prove it?" the queen asked, her voice soft but not gentle, "If there is anything you can tell us that might point to the true culprit, anything you've been holding back for political points later, now is the time."

Corazón's silence spoke volumes, and Bogo wondered at what it meant. If Corazón was guilty, surely he would try placing the blame on anyone else, no matter what, as he tried to save his own miserable hide. "I can offer nothing but my word," he said at last.

"I'm afraid that's not good enough," the queen said, "I'll need to have you confined for the time being."

Imprisonment was one of those things that any noble would have normally raged against as one of the ultimate insults to their rank. But Corazón was almost meek, as though his pride had been broken under their questioning. "As your majesty commands," he said.

Once Corazón had been taken away, the queen turned to Bogo. "What do you think?" she asked.

Bogo sighed, rubbing at his eyes with one hoof. He had honestly hoped that Corazón would have broken and the whole affair could have ended, but it seemed that he wasn't quite so lucky. "He's either innocent or an excellent actor," Bogo said at last, and the queen nodded.

"I know you don't care for him," she said.

"I don't," Bogo said, "But we may have tipped our hand too early."

"We still have Cerdo and Cencerro," the queen said, "As well as using the princess and me as bait. Perhaps this questioning will at last goad someone into action."

"Or it might convince them that acting is too dangerous," Bogo countered.

"Perhaps," the queen said, and Bogo thought he saw the burden of power in the way her head sagged slightly as she spoke, "But we are committed now. I don't think it wise to stop before questioning the last two of my advisers."

Bogo nodded. "Lady Cencerro, then," he said, "I'll have her brought in."

He rose to walk to the door of the carriage and make his request of the guards, but before he could put a hoof on the door knob the queen spoke. "Incidentally, Lord Bogo," she said, "What I said about your having my full confidence is true. So long as you're at my side, I'm sure none of them can hurt me."

A curious feeling rose in Bogo's chest that he wasn't sure had a name. It wasn't pride in the compliment or shame that she felt the need to encourage him. It was a feeling somewhere between despair and resolution, and Bogo simply nodded, glad his face was away from the queen. "Thank you, your majesty," he said.

* * *

"Diego's _dead_?" Lady Cencerro gasped, her tiny hooves flying to her mouth.

She had been far meeker than Corazón had been when she had been first brought in, but then she wasn't nearly as bold as her ally and sometime rival. If she had wondered at why she had been called in alone she hadn't shown it, although her face upon hearing the news was full of nothing but surprise. "We were never close, but... What happened to him? Was he hiding an injury from those awful barbarians? That'd be just like Diego."

Bogo would have been more suspicious if she had reacted more strongly; he would have seen tears as all but an admission of guilt, considering that she and her cousin must have only seen each other on rare occasions. Her choice of words, though, was particularly interesting. Was she guilty and trying to subtly suggest that she knew nothing by bringing up a detail from the story that Diego Cencerro had told, or was her surprise actually genuine?

"Before he died, he said you were working with him," Bogo said.

For Alba Cencerro, they had decided it was best if the queen stayed as silent as possible. It seemed likely that it would put her more on edge, considering her usual closeness to the queen, and there was no denying that Bogo was the more intimidating mammal between the two of them. Well, usually at least; when Queen Lana had ordered Corazón to sit Bogo thought a rampaging elephant would have yielded to her tone alone. He resisted the urge to shake his head as he brushed the stray thought aside, turning his focus solely to Cencerro. Her eyes had widened, and she was glancing from the queen's stony silence to Bogo and back again. "Working with him on what?" she asked, "I don't understand, what's going on?"

"We have the code book you've been using to encrypt your messages," Bogo said, pulling the little book out for the second time, "We know the two of you have been plotting for some time."

"Wh— What are you saying, Lord Bogo?" Cencerro demanded, her voice higher and more shrill than usual, "I have no idea what you mean, I've never seen that book before in my life. Please, your majesty, you _know_ I would never plot against—"

"You deny any involvement with Diego Cencerro's treasonous plot, then?" Bogo demanded, cutting her off.

The little ewe looked almost to be hyperventilating, and if it wasn't a matter of the lives of the royal family Bogo might have felt some sympathy for how pathetic she looked, cringing under his glance. "I swear! By anything and everything I swear!" she said, "Someone must be framing me, that's the only answer. Please, just tell me what you have and... and... I'll do anything to prove I wasn't involved."

Tears actually started building up in her eyes as she spoke, and the little sheep became a whimpering mess. That, at least, seemed an appropriate response. "Alba, please," the queen said, speaking at last, "Anything you know about the plot on my daughter's life, you _must_ tell me."

Cencerro's entire body shook with her sobs. "I don't know anything about it, I swear," she managed to say.

Bogo and the queen exchanged a wordless glance. "I'm afraid you can't return to your carriage yet," Bogo said as he stood.

The look of what seemed to be genuine fear that appeared on Cencerro's face didn't quite make Bogo pity her—he still had his suspicions, after all—it would have been quite the act to fake it. He saw her out of the carriage and under the watchful eyes of the guards before taking his seat at the queen's side again. "I don't know how you could stand interrogating mammals for a living," the queen said after a brief pause, "I feel awful."

She didn't elaborate, but then she didn't have to. Bogo knew that watching mammals pulled to their emotional limits was not a job for everyone, and to see two mammals that the queen had a decent amount of respect for must have been even harder for her. There were, Bogo knew, some interrogators who took a great deal of pleasure in breaking mammals with nothing more than their words, but he had always been suspicious of such mammals. "It's not easy," he admitted.

The queen sighed. "I may be permanently damaging some of the most important relationships to the smooth running of the kingdom, and we might not even learn anything useful."

"That's true, your majesty," Bogo said, inclining his head, "But it's a reasonable risk."

The queen considered his words for a long moment. "Then we may as well get this over with. Have Cerdo brought in."

* * *

Cerdo arrived to the carriage puffing for breath and mopping at his forehead with an elaborately embroidered handkerchief in one flabby arm. He murmured something beneath his breath as he stood in the doorway, and Bogo blinked. "What was that?" he asked.

"By the gods, today's a hot one," Cerdo said with a somewhat abashed smile, "I can't stand it."

In Bogo's opinion, the day was not particularly warm, but the pig's clothes were thick and elaborately embroidered, his stubby fingers festooned with rings, and Cerdo was undeniably fat. Small wonder, then, that he was uncomfortable. "A glass of water, then?" Bogo asked.

The gesture was a small one, but Bogo thought he'd have an easier time reading Cerdo's round and pudgy face if the pig wasn't also panting with discomfort. "That'd be lovely, thank you Lord Bogo," he said, and then collapsed into a chair.

Still, despite the fact that Bogo suspected Cerdo the least of the queen's three advisers, he paid more attention to the pig than he did to the carafe of cucumber water—a favorite of both the queen and the princess—and glass that he extracted from a cabinet in the wall of the carriage. Cerdo, however, seemed to be too beset by the heat to do much more than sit as he waited for Bogo to give him the glass, pulling at his stiff collar with one fat finger as he did so.

"Thank you, Lord Bogo," Cerdo said gratefully, lifting the glass and saluting him slightly as Bogo took his place at the queen's side.

Bogo waited until Cerdo had drained his glass—which didn't take very long—and set it aside on the table. "Diego Cencerro is—" Bogo began, but he never finished.

Cerdo had broken into a coughing fit, barking hoarsely as he put one hoof to his mouth and raised the other apologetically. But rather than ending, his coughs became louder and horribly wet sounding, the pig's jowls shaking with the force of each one before he suddenly stopped. Cerdo clutched at his throat, white foam coming from his mouth as he gagged, his eyes screwed shut in obvious pain. The pig shuddered as the pink skin of his face darkened first to red and then almost to purple, making awful and inarticulate noises as he flopped out of his chair and thrashed on the floor of the carriage. The queen rose, her eyes wide with surprise, but Bogo rushed over to Cerdo before she could move. "Stay back!" he roared.

Possibilities flew through his mind. Poison was the obvious answer, the carafe of cucumber water still on the table the obvious means of delivery. Unless Cerdo had been poisoned before entering the carriage and his apparent discomfort with the heat had been the first symptom. But if it had been the water, had it been meant for the queen? Or perhaps Cerdo had been poisoned neither before entering the carriage nor by the water and he was faking his response? But if Cerdo _was_ faking it, perhaps planning on springing up and taking Bogo and the queen by surprise, he was doing an excellent job of it. His feet beat against the floor as he gasped helplessly for breath, and Bogo scooped him up easily despite the pig's significant bulk. Bogo ran for the door, keeping an eye on the pig's struggles for breath as he did so, but if Cerdo planned to harm him he gave no sign of it. The dying mammal's attention seemed to be focused entirely on keeping enough air in his lungs as his movements became increasingly weak.

Bogo banged on the door to the carriage with one massive hoof as he cradled Cerdo in the other. "Get me an alchemist and a doctor _now_!" he bellowed, but no response came from the other side.

"Guards!" he cried, as an uneasy twinge of alarm worked its way down his spine.

The guards outside the door should have never left under any circumstances, but after a horrible moment of silence broken only by the feeble gurgling coming from Cerdo, there was suddenly a pounding coming from the other side of the door. "Your majesty!" a voice cried, which Bogo vaguely recognized as one of the guards, "Someone's attacking the princess's carriage!"

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

In the real world, lions do sometimes prey on cape buffalo. However, buffalo are not exactly easy hunting if they're not sick or young, and in a one on one fight a lion's odds are not particularly good. Cape buffalo are enormously strong and have horns well suited to goring attackers, making them quite capable of defending themselves. Bogo, at least, is not intimidated at all by the potential threat that Corazón might pose.

Although the common phrase "sweating like a pig" is used to suggest that someone is sweating profusely, the truth is that the phrase is actually unrelated to the animal and that pigs don't actually sweat very much. The origins of the phrase comes from pig iron, which forms condensation on its surface, resembling sweat, as it cools. And for the mammals, while pigs do have some sweat glands they don't really have enough to rely on evaporative cooling as humans do.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment I'd love to know what you thought!


	47. Chapter 47

The princess swallowed heavily at the words, but before either Judy or Nick could say anything she spoke. "What's the pass phrase?" she asked.

Her voice wavered slightly with an adolescent crack but there was a firmness to it as well, a ghost of the queen's commanding presence. There was no immediate response from beyond the door. The princess licked her lips as she reached into the cabinet and pulled free a sabre—one with a sharpened edge—and hefted it in her paw. Judy did the same, drawing her own sabre free of its sheath. Nick, meanwhile, had pulled out his alchemical focuses and was setting them carefully on the table. "This door won't open unless—" the princess began, but she never got the chance to finish.

There was suddenly a horrible banging noise as something hit the carriage, hard, and then up and down traded places with a stomach-churning speed. The princess and Nick both cried out in alarm as the carriage rolled with bruising force, the air suddenly full of missiles as everything not securely fastened to something became a projectile. The incongruous scent of cucumber-flavored water filled the air as the delicate carafe smashed to pieces and created a storm of shards. The back of Judy's head hit one of the light fixtures mounted to the wall of the carriage hard enough that she saw stars and felt a hot and sticky trickle of blood going down her neck as the carriage bounced one final time and came to a stop on its side. Shrieks of pain and shouts Judy couldn't quite make out over the sudden throbbing in her head came from outside the carriage, but inside the only sound Judy could hear was the princess taking short and tight sobbing breaths.

Dazed, Judy looked over, her head seeming to move sluggishly. She was sitting on what had been a wall, and the princess was in the opposite corner cradling her wrist. Her right arm had developed a disconcerting bend to it, obviously broken by the tumbling of the carriage, but the young chimera was doing her best to keep on a brave face despite how terribly it must have hurt. Nick was sprawled between them, flat on his back, bleeding from at least half a dozen small cuts in his face but still breathing. "Are you alright?" Judy croaked; her voice sounded terribly faint and far away to her own ears.

Nick simply groaned in response, but managed to push himself up to a sitting position. The princess nodded. "My— My arm is broken," she said, her voice tight, "But I think that's it."

"We landed door side down," Nick observed as he unsteadily made his way to his feet, "That's something."

He was right. The carriage only had a single door, and the wall it was in was now the floor. Judy forced herself to stand and was suddenly overcome with a wave of vertigo she did her best to hide by fumbling around for her sabre and picking it up. "What about you, commandant?" he asked.

Her new title sounded odd when Nick said it, but there was no missing the frown of concern that accompanied the words. "Hit my head," Judy said, relieved to find that the slow spinning of the room was stopping even if the pounding in her head barely lessened, "I'll be fine. Someone might still try to get in."

Judy gestured with her sabre to take in the carriage as she spoke. With the door suddenly inaccessible—except perhaps by a mole—there wasn't any other obvious way in. For the sake of what Judy could only assume was the protection of the royal family, the carriage had been built without windows. The light fixtures of alchemical torches, one of which had a smear of blood across the crystal from where the back of Judy's head had hit it, meant the interior was bright rather than oppressively dark as it would have been otherwise; although there were presumably vents for air to the outside they were either so cunningly hidden or so small that Judy couldn't see them.

Judy did her best to marshal her thoughts and ignore the pain radiating from the swelling lump on her head to try to listen to what was going on outside the carriage. There had been, she was quite sure, mammals screaming as the carriage had flipped. The horses pulling the carriage seemed like the likely candidates for that; they might have taken a nasty tumble. There were voices speaking outside the carriage, but so many and so far away that they were difficult to distinguish.

"I'm guessing you don't want me to make a door," Nick said, speaking in a low voice as he moved to stand at Judy's side.

She shook her head, focusing intently on trying to figure out what was happening. The princess's carriage had been at the back of the procession heading toward Phoenix, where it would have the greatest protection from any threats coming from the settlement. The number of guards around the carriage had been surprisingly small; it was almost as though Bogo was trying to provoke an attack. Not that Judy seriously believed the stolid and dour buffalo would be so reckless, but it was odd.

"We guard the princess until someone comes with the right pass phrase," Judy said as firmly as she could.

"And what if that never happens?" Nick asked, his voice still low.

"Would you be able to make a tunnel to safety from the door?" Judy asked, gesturing at the door.

If, by some catastrophe, the queen, Bogo, and everyone else they had trusted was dead, she'd fight to keep the princess safe for as long as possible. But it would be a senseless waste to have Nick and the princess die with her. Judy gripped her sabre more tightly, and found that she really hoped it didn't come to that. "I can't promise that it'll lead to safety," Nick said, and there was a wryly cynical cast to his features, "But I can definitely make a tunnel. Let me see if I can do anything about her arm, first."

Nick's steps as he walked away were somewhat ginger, but other than the shallow cuts in his face from the broken carafe he looked fine. Judy turned back to face the wall that had once been the floor, examining it closely. The carriage had been very solidly built; so far as she could tell nothing had buckled or broken even after it had flipped. The former floor might be the most obvious weak spot, though, depending on how the wheels and axles connected to it. Judy tried remembering, but she couldn't think of anything that had particularly stood out.

And then the wall exploded.

For the second time in a matter of minutes, Judy found herself tumbling through the air again, and the pain from hitting the lump on the back of her head against a wall brought tears to her eyes. Her ears were ringing, and when she tried pushing herself away from the wall it felt like she was trying to wade through a swamp. The princess was coated in dust, still huddled miserably against a wall and clutching at her broken arm, which had been partially splinted. And then when Judy saw Nick her heart almost stopped. He was moving feebly, pinned beneath a large and twisted chunk of metal that looked like it might have been part of the carriage's axle, and Judy called his name in a voice she couldn't even hear over the ringing in her ears. But then she caught a flash of motion out of the corner of her eye and turned instinctively.

It was a decision that saved her life. A male sheep, burlier and with longer wool than Diego Cencerro, was rushing at her with truly unnatural speed, a spear pointed right at her as his mouth twisted in a furious sneer. Her arm snapped up reflexively, the instinct long trained in, and somehow her sabre was miraculously still in her paw. Judy clumsily deflected the blow, feeling the shock of it all the way up her shoulder; the sheep had unnatural strength in addition to his unnatural speed. Judy's paw felt suddenly nerveless from the force of the strike, even though it had barely glanced by the blade as she redirected the strike. The sheep was still coming, though, even though the deadly tip of his spear was already past her. He lowered his head, pointing his curling horns right at her, and before Judy could disengage her sabre and do anything with it he head-butted her.

The blow felt like she had been swatted aside by an elephant; Judy felt her breastplate crumple under the sheep's charge and slam into her chest so hard it knocked her breath out. Judy's legs buckled underneath her and she slipped to the floor, landing flat on her back and sliding a few feet as she reached up with her free paw and wrapped it around the shaft of the sheep's spear.

She might as well have been a mouse for all the difference it seemed to make to him. The sheep was snarling something wordless as he pulled his spear up so fast that Judy barely managed to stay along for the ride, and he gave it a hard jerk to try to shake her loose. Judy whipped outwards, her paw burning from the friction as she slid a good six inches, but then she managed to bring her sabre up and make a strike at one of the sheep's wrists.

It was a clumsy blow, nearly as artless as the swing of a hatchet, but the sabre Nick had made her was incredibly sharp. It sliced through the thick black tunic the sheep wore and bit into his arm with almost no resistance, and Judy was rewarded by the sheep's grip on the spear loosening. Judy took advantage of the room she had gained and swung again, managing to catch the sheep in the gut.

The ringing in her ears had subsided enough that she heard his horrible squeal of pain, although she wished that she hadn't; it felt as though it was burning itself into her mind. And then the attacker collapsed as though he was boneless, his eyes rolling up into his head and the spear clattering to the floor as he lost his grip on it an instant before he fell too. Judy watched him for a moment, and it felt as though the details she had only noticed in passing before were flooding into her mind. She didn't recognize the sheep at all, which was unsurprising considering that she didn't know very many sheep. His clothes vaguely resembled the cloth parts of a City Guard uniform, all made of thickly quilted fabric, but they were a dull black rather than vivid red. The torc at his neck was bronze, as Nick's had been, and just as unadorned with any sort of marker of affiliation. His chest didn't seem to be rising or falling and his eyes were closed, so Judy turned away from him to look at the Princess. "Are you alright, Princess Isabel?" Judy asked gently.

The chimera didn't look to have suffered any additional injuries in the explosion of the side of the carriage—something she'd have to ask Nick about, since it seemed like alchemy could have been at work—but for the moment she focused on her duty no matter how badly she wanted to run to Nick's side.

"I'm fine," the princess said in a small voice, "I'm fine."

"Good," Judy said, slow relief filling her, "That's goo—"

"Judy, behind you!" Nick's voice interrupted her.

She whirled around just in time to see the would-be assassin lifting a small knife, his arm cocked and prepared in a throwing motion. Judy swung her sabre down at him without the chance for any conscious thought to pass through her head. The sheep stopped moving at all after a final violent spasm and Judy stared down at him, the fingers holding the sabre suddenly numb. It was the first time she had ever killed a mammal, and a sick feeling welled up in her chest. He had been trying to kill the princess, and he had nearly killed her. But everything he had ever been or would ever be was gone now, and she was responsible.

Judy wobbled on her feet, feeling hot tears forming in her eyes. The academy had tried to prepare future officers for the possibility that they might have to kill a mammal in the line of duty. That sometimes there would be no alternative to deadly force. Judy had listened attentively to those lectures, taking her usual copious notes, but some part of her had always assumed that she would be one of those officers who never had to kill. It had been arrogance, she realized, arrogance of the sort that did not befit an officer. She had always been so confident that she could find another way, that if she had been in the position of any one of those officers who had come in to speak of the time they had killed she would brought the suspect down non-fatally. But in the heat of the moment, she had seen for herself exactly who she was. There had been no hesitation, no demand for the sheep to drop his weapon. She had seen only the danger and reacted without as much as the chance to think about it.

"Commandant Totchli," the princess's voice suddenly interrupted Judy's thoughts.

She turned slowly, feeling almost as dazed as she had the first time she had bounced off the walls of the carriage. The princess had managed to stand and walk over to her, although her broken arm must have made that difficult with how it was constrained by a sling. Nick was still on the floor, pinned beneath a chunk of metal, but he was looking at her, his eyes steady and focused as he futilely pushed against the piece of debris holding him down. "You... You..." the princess continued, stammering, and then she seemed to lose her words.

She pulled Judy into an awkward one-armed embrace, squeezing Judy tight with a surprising strength. Judy was shorter than the chimera, the top of her head not even coming up to the bottom of Princess Isabel's chin, but she could feel her fine clothes and the peculiar texture of her woolly fur. "Thank you," the princess managed at last, "Thank you. I was afraid. So afraid. And you..."

Princess Isabel trailed off, still hugging Judy tightly, and Judy looked past the princess to where Nick was pinned on the floor. He didn't seem to be in any immediate danger—a loop of metal, Judy saw, had miraculously gone around his leg at just the right spot where it had merely trapped him like a manacle instead of punching through flesh and bone—and from the symbols he had started drawing in the dust she supposed he was planning on using his alchemy to free himself.

"You did what you had to," Nick said, his tone rich with sympathy.

Judy rolled the words through her mind, trying them on for size. The assassin would have killed her. Had tried to kill her, in fact. And from there, he certainly would have killed the princess. Maybe even Nick, too, if he had thought the fox to be a threat. Neither one of them would have been in any shape to do anything about it, either, the princess incapacitated by pain and fear and Nick trapped under debris. Killing the sheep still didn't feel good; the question of what she could have done differently felt as though it would plague her for the rest of her life. But she had done her duty, protecting the mammal she had been assigned to protect and saving the life of the mammal she loved. "If you didn't regret it," Nick continued slowly, his voice low and nearly drowned out by the sobbing gasps for breath the princess was making into Judy's shoulder, "You wouldn't be..."

He trailed off for a moment, seemingly in an effort to find the right word. "You wouldn't be a good mammal," he finished at last, and Judy nodded slowly.

Maybe Nick was right. It was nice to think so, anyway, but if nothing else she had saved him. That had to count for something, and Judy did her best to make her peace with what she had done as she slowly and gently turned around with the princess still sobbing into her shoulder to keep watch through the ruined side of the carriage.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Nick and Judy were never informed of the plan Bogo and the queen worked out to try using the royal family as bait, so here Judy is musing that it almost seems like Bogo is being reckless and encouraging an attack. It may be something of a case of the pot calling the kettle black there for Judy to think someone else is being reckless, but there you have it.

On an unrelated note, you may have noticed that I have a new avatar now. It was a gift from TheWyvernsWeaver, and the full piece can be viewed on his DeviantArt. FanFiction doesn't permit external links, but if you search for his username you should be able to find it and his other wonderful pieces of art.

It was a fantastic gift that I'm very happy with, and if you've never checked out his work before Weaver is an amazing artist whose pieces are I think among the best in the fandom.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought.


	48. Chapter 48

The moment of time between Bogo demanding that the mammal on the other side of the door give their pass phrase and actually hearing it in return felt endless. It was as though time had frozen at a tipping point, between what could be an attack on the queen and what was simply a report of an attack on the princess. When the answer did finally come, it took Bogo a moment to assure himself that it was correct, that under pressure he wasn't about to make a dreadful mistake.

He opened the door, already beginning to bark out orders. "All stop!" he shouted; the carriage was moving, as it had been for the last several hours, at what would have been a brisk walking pace for himself, and the last thing he wanted was to stray too far from the princess's carriage, "Everything stops!"

To their credit, the horses pulling the queen's carriage didn't hesitate so much as a moment, and Bogo had to brace himself against the door frame as the carriage creaked and rattled to a stop. "Get an alchemist and a doctor and have Cerdo seen to," he snapped at one of the guards outside the door, who had managed to stay right by the carriage as it slowed.

"And you," Bogo said, turning to face the more wide-eyed of the pair, "Get more guards for the queen, and then—"

"No," the queen's voice suddenly interrupted him from behind his back.

Bogo turned and faced her; she was standing immediately behind him. "Lord Bogo and I are going to my daughter's carriage now, and you will report on the way."

Bogo could have made any of a number of protests—it was too dangerous for the queen to walk into an unknown situation, the safest place for her was in her own carriage, it still might be a trap—but they all died in his throat as he considered the queen, whose face and voice were both harder than he had ever known her to be. Instead, he jumped out of the carriage, offering the queen one hoof which she accepted in her far daintier one as she scrambled after him.

The guard, a thickly built rhinoceros whose gleaming breastplate could have almost made a dining table for the queen, hadn't spoken again since saying the pass phrase, but the anxiety written across his face was plainly visible. He swallowed hard, and began setting off in the direction of the princess's carriage at a pace so fast that the queen could barely keep up. But keep up she did, her face twisted in concentration as she soaked up the details, ignoring the chaos of the army and the shouts and orders rippling away from her carriage as the full stop came about.

"It was a sheep, Captain General," the rhino began, his voice deep and resonant, "I've never seen anything like it. He was just a blur, he moved so fast, and he cut through the guards like they were nothing. He knocked the carriage over all by himself."

As the rhino spoke, the evidence of the truth of his words began to become apparent. The princess's carriage came into view, and it was indeed on its side. The horses who had been pulling it were scattered about nearby; it didn't look as though any of them had survived. The carriage itself had kicked up a furrow in the alkaline grit of the wastelands, the path it had taken as it tumbled quite obvious. But what made it different from any other carriage accident Bogo had ever seen—and especially in his younger days, he had seen many—was what must have happened afterwards. The bottom of the carriage was almost entirely gone, caved inward from what must have been incredible force. "Then he blew a hole in the carriage somehow," the rhino continued, "He was inside before anyone could do anything."

"And the princess?" the queen asked.

Her words were surprisingly calm, so carefully neutral that there seemed to be almost no emotion in them. The rhino shook his massive head. "No one's gotten close enough to tell, your majesty," he said, "We didn't want to let another assassin have another shot at her."

The queen nodded, and then her pace increased until she was running, all semblance of dignity forgotten. "Isabel!" she shouted, "Isabel!"

She was moving with the intensity unique to a worried parent, but she was still a sheep. Bogo easily caught up to the queen, positioning himself in front of her. "It might be a trap," he said, quietly, trying to prevent anyone else from hearing.

"I don't care," the queen snapped, and Bogo saw the anguish in her eyes.

She had decided that gambling with her daughter's life was worth the risk, and now she was about to find out if she had been right. What would happen if the princess hadn't survived? What would the queen do with herself then?

Mercifully, a voice that was undeniably the princess's called "Mother!"

Princess Isabel staggered into view, appearing in the opening blown through the bottom of the carriage, which had become a wall, immediately before Totchli could put herself in front of the princess. Both of them looked to be quite a mess; one of the princess's arms was in a crude-looking sling and Totchli was visibly splattered with blood that stained her gleaming breastplate. But they, at least, had survived, even if Bogo could see no sign of the fox.

The queen put on another burst of speed, moving remarkably fast for a sheep of her age in a dress, and an instant later had reached the carriage and pulled the princess into a gentle hug, mindful of what must have been a broken arm. Both mother and daughter were crying, each sobbing out words that Bogo couldn't make out. He looked over their heads into the carriage, which was just as shaken about as the mammals inside it.

Broken glass was spread across the wall that had become the floor, and some of the bits of finery had broken off furniture or walls either as the carriage tumbled or when the bottom had been blown in. Chunks of metal from the carriage axles and suspension were embedded in the wall across from the opening. One of the pieces of metal had a curiously melted and stretched look to it, surrounded by an array of what Bogo recognized as alchemical symbols, but Captain Nicholas was crouched over the corpse of a sheep.

Totchli recognized where he was looking and said, in a low voice, "I... killed the attacker, sir. I didn't mean to."

"I'm sure you had no choice, Commandant," Bogo said, as gently as he could.

He would have greatly preferred that the attacker be taken alive; no one could interrogate a dead mammal. And even leaving that aside, killing a mammal was no easy thing. Some of the officers he had gone to the academy with, even some of the meanest and toughest mammals he had ever known, hadn't been able to stay in the City Guard after killing a mammal. Even when everyone agreed that the world was better without the deceased mammal in it, it was a terrible burden for an officer to carry. He wondered if Totchli had it in her to continue, but from the way she squared her shoulders he thought she did. She would regret it, he was sure, and would mourn what she had done, but it wouldn't break her.

"You did very well, saving the princess," Bogo continued, and he felt a warring flicker between pride and shame.

She had acted in the best spirit of an officer of the City Guard, not for the first time, and all that after he had been completely set against Corazón's mad plan to increase the diversity of the City Guard. Perhaps, leaving his own age, failures, and fading focus aside, it was time for someone new to head up the City Guard. Someone who wouldn't be so bound by tradition that they would overlook obvious opportunities. But his successor was a thought for another day, and Bogo pulled his focus back to the present. "What happened?" he asked, doing his best to pay careful attention to Totchli's words.

She laid out how the dead sheep had claimed that something had happened to the queen, and then when asked the pass phrase had flipped the carriage over. She described how, as Nicholas had seen to the princess's broken arm, the sheep had created his own opening, pinning the fox under a piece of metal debris and leaving her to fight him alone. Her voice caught a little when she described how, at Nicholas's warning she had spun around and killed the attacker an instant before he could throw a knife at the princess—and as she spoke, Nicholas looked up sharply, appearing to pay intense focus to her words—and then had done her best to stand watch while waiting for backup.

"What about the sheep?" Bogo asked, turning his attention to Nicholas.

The fox had clearly been rifling through the corpse's pockets, but he simply shook his head. "Nothing on him but weapons and some empty quauhxicalli vials," he said, "Not so much as a colored piece of string on his torc. Looks like he didn't have a spare for whatever he used to get in, but I'd bet it was alchemical."

Bogo frowned, ignoring the rather casual way Nicholas had addressed him. It was the exact same means of attack as the two previous ones on the princess. A mammal using quauhxicallis for incredible speed had headed directly for the princess, apparently planning on reaching her before anyone could react. The dead sheep himself seemed fairly unremarkable; he had a somewhat bulky build and an impressive set of curling horns, but his clothes were simple and he had nothing in the way of ornamentation except his plain torc.

He was, however, a sheep.

Bogo couldn't help but wonder if he had at long last caught the break he had been so desperately searching for. As most of the mammals in Lady Cencerro's home territory were sheep, most of her personal guard was also composed of sheep. He didn't recognize the ram on the floor, but...

"It was Lady Cencerro you were baiting at the time of the attack," the queen said, interrupting his thoughts.

Bogo had been vaguely aware of her finally letting her daughter go and profusely thanking Totchli and Nicholas for keeping her daughter safe, but he had become so lost in his thoughts he hadn't heard her approach. Still, her statement—it hadn't been a question—mirrored his own thoughts. "It was, your majesty," Bogo agreed.

He still didn't know precisely _why_ the sheep would have betrayed her oldest friend, but it wasn't looking good for Lady Cencerro. Her cousin had been behind the attack on Phoenix, and now when the princess had been attacked, it had been in one of the careful windows of opportunity left for her to think she could exploit. "Then I think it's time we have a talk with her," the queen said.

Bogo had previously thought he had heard the queen's voice as hard as it could possibly get. But now he knew he was wrong; there was a wealth of menace and coldness in her words that would have made any smart mammal yield to her. "As you command, your majesty," Bogo said, bowing his head.

* * *

They hadn't left the wreckage of the princess's carriage immediately, of course. The queen had insisted on having not just the princess's arm seen to, but also the injuries of Totchli and Nicholas. Of the two, the rabbit was in worse shape; she had a horrible bloody lump on the back of her head with the possibility of a mild concussion, while the fox had nothing worse than half a dozen shallow cuts to his face and about twenty tiny shards of glass embedded in his arms and legs. Neither one of the princess's guards nor the princess herself had anything in the way of life-threatening injuries, but Bogo could understand both the queen's concern for her own daughter and to seeing after the mammals who had saved her.

Bogo hadn't minded, either; it gave him the chance to marshal his thoughts as the injured mammals were seen to and transferred to the queen's carriage. Bogo had ordered the army to begin moving again; Phoenix was drawing ever nearer at the same brisk pace it had moved before the attack. Cerdo, Bogo learned while he waited, would survive his poisoning; he had received medical treatment quickly enough, although the pig was still too feeble to rise from his bed. His bed in a carriage that was under guard; even with so promising a lead on Cencerro Bogo wasn't going to assume that she had worked alone or that she might not lash out at her fellow council members if she was only given the chance to. When the guard who had come from Cerdo's carriage finished his update, Bogo ordered her to check on the condition of Cencerro before he and the queen visited her; the last thing he wanted was yet another deadly surprise.

When the report came back as all clear, Bogo followed after as he and the queen were brought to the carriage Cencerro had been locked in alone. It was, truth be told, rather dismal compared to either of the royal carriages or Cencerro's own carriage; Bogo hadn't trusted any of the council members enough to put them under effective house arrest in their own carriages. Perhaps it was paranoia, but he hated the idea that they might have something hidden away that he wouldn't know about and couldn't anticipate. Instead, supplies had been re-arranged to make enough space to imprison each of them in individual carriages that had been meant for the heaviest of the City Guard's supplies. It had meant that some of the guardsmammals marching to keep pace had to carry supplies themselves, but if anyone had complained about the burden no one had dared to do so within his earshot.

The nature of the carriage Cencerro had been placed into meant that it had the somewhat incongruous sweet smell of molasses and rough but sturdily built walls of thick wooden boards reinforced with metal strips. Inside, Alba Cencerro looked pathetically small, the space meant for transporting a significant number of barrels much too large for a lone sheep. Cencerro herself was simply sitting in one corner of the carriage, her arms folded around her knees, and when she looked at Bogo and the queen upon their entrance there was no defiance or confusion in her eyes.

Only resignation.

"Lady Cencerro," Bogo began, but the sheep interrupted him before he could get any further.

"I did it," she said, her resignation just as evident in her voice as it had been in her eyes, "That's what you want, isn't it? A confession? There you have it. I did it. I tried to have the princess killed."

Bogo blinked in surprise; he hadn't expected something so easy. Emotional manipulation from the sheep as she tried to make him feel guilty for suspecting her seemed more likely. Even pleading her innocence would have fit the Cencerro that he knew. But there was none of that on display, and it stunned him into motionlessness. The queen, however, was not so affected, and before Bogo could do so much as lift a hoof to stop her she had run up to Cencerro and slapped her across the face with enough force to knock the ewe's head to the side. "How could you, Alba?" the queen spat, rage evident in her voice, "How _could_ you?"

Bogo was thankful that he had made sure that Cencerro didn't have anything on her that could have been used as a weapon, but he wasn't going to rely on the guards having caught everything. He pulled Cencerro away from the queen, placing himself between the two sheep. "She might be a danger to you, your majesty," he said, as firmly and yet politely as he could manage.

The queen's nostrils flared and he could see her entire body tremble with suppressed anger, but at last she nodded. "As you say, Lord Bogo," she managed at last.

"I did it for power," Cencerro continued blandly, apparently answering the queen's furious questioning, "I thought if the princess died, you'd name me your heir and my family would take over following your death."

For the first time, Cencerro looked up to address the queen directly, and Bogo didn't like the look in her eyes. It was something he hadn't seen very often, even after many years as a beat officer, but it was always a sign of trouble. It was the look of a mammal who had been touched by madness, cursed by the gods for whatever reason; it was a fanatical pureness that bordered on ecstasy. "I never would have hurt you, your majesty," Cencerro said, a ghastly smile touching her face, "You mean—"

"And killing my daughter wouldn't?" the queen interrupted, her incredulity obvious, "You could really try killing my daughter and think it wouldn't hurt me?"

Cencerro paused, but that horrible smile didn't leave her face. "It would have been better for the kingdom, if only Diego and I had succeeded. You've always wanted what's best for the kingdom, and so have I. We just disagreed on the means."

Bogo couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. "Why are you confessing now?" he asked.

Cencerro shrugged expansively. "It's over, isn't it? If my last attempt had succeeded, I could have salvaged everything. Pinned the blame on Corazón, or maybe Cerdo. But you'll find the code book among my belongings if you haven't already. Alfonso will give me up, I'm sure, and you probably have a message on the way to that effect. There's nothing I can do now."

The fatalism evident in her words fit Cencerro as poorly as her turn toward fanatical madness. But the ewe continued, looking Bogo dead in the eye. "That llama and Jaime were both working for me. I betrayed both of them, of course—did you really think it was a coincidence that _my_ mammals arrested Jaime? Or that he somehow got free? He hated half-breed freaks like the princess, and I used that. I convinced him it'd be better for a sheep—a _pure_ sheep—to lead the kingdom again, and he was only too happy to help. Can you believe I got him to be willing to sacrifice his life for it?"

Cencerro laughed, and that creeping madness was in her eyes again. The sound was high-pitched and terrible, sending a deep quiver of unease into Bogo's gut. She had played him for a fool, dancing circles around him and his investigation. He had suspected her, of course, but he hadn't seen the truth of what she was, hadn't gotten to the bottom of the matter. Would someone else have done a better job? Someone who wasn't getting old and prone to distraction might have been able to see something he had been blind to.

"I can sign a confession, if you'd like," Cencerro continued, "Put this matter to rest."

"What about Phoenix?" Bogo asked, "What happened there?"

His mind was still reeling from how badly he had failed to spot something that should have been obvious—how had Cencerro fooled him so badly?—but if his army was marching into a trap he wanted to know sooner rather than later.

"Nothing more than mercenaries," Cencerro said, "It'll be abandoned by the time we get there. It was Diego's condition for helping."

"And you acted alone?" the queen asked, her voice calmer, but still with rage simmering in it.

"Myself and Diego and Jaime," Cencerro replied, "Everyone else was only brought in for exactly what we needed. Too large a conspiracy and someone will talk."

There was a long silence, Bogo and the queen both considering Cencerro's words. "I'll want that confession," Bogo said, "Every detail, every mammal you talked to as part of your plan."

Cencerro nodded, apparently unperturbed. "How did you hide this so long, Alba?" the queen asked, and despite her previous anger Bogo thought that there was genuine disappointment in her voice.

"You never noticed how I always resented you," Cencerro said, "Why would you notice anything else?"

* * *

Bogo and the queen had left Cencerro with a thick stack of paper, a pen, and a guard given strict instructions to watch over the ewe and make sure she didn't try to escape or kill herself as she wrote out her confession. They had reentered the royal carriage, now shared with the princess and her two guards she seemed to have become somewhat attached to. "We'll still investigate Phoenix, of course," the queen had said after Bogo had finished giving a condensed version of events.

So far as he was concerned, simply telling them that Cencerro had confessed to her guilt was enough; a full version could follow once he had her written confession and had thoroughly followed up on everything. "There's no telling if Diego Cencerro had plans of his own. Or if Alba Cencerro was lying to us about that," Bogo agreed, nodding.

The princess sighed. "It'd be nice to think it's all over," she said, "But I suppose you must follow up."

She had seemed more disappointed than anything else to learn that Alba Cencerro, one of her mother's oldest friends, had plotted to kill her simply to get a full-blooded sheep on the throne. "But you did very well, Lord Bogo," the princess said, favoring him with a small smile.

"I've failed more than I've succeeded," Bogo replied, shaking his head, "She never should have gotten so far in her plans."

"One of the hazards of growing old," the queen said, and while her face remained neutral Bogo thought he heard a smile in her voice, "You can't blame yourself for missing clues no one else saw either."

Something about her words triggered something in his mind, some kind of sense that he was still missing a clue. They bit at him, and Bogo tried remembering what it had been. There was something that seemed important, something dancing just outside his ability to recall. But what could it possibly be? He frowned. _You're growing old and forgetful, Lord Bogo,_ a memory seemed to surface from the hazy recesses of his mind, _What is it to forget one more thing?_

Bogo's frown deepened, and he missed whatever it was that the princess said in response to the queen's words. Who had said that to him? Certainly he hadn't been open about his growing tendency for his focus to wander, but maybe that wasn't the important part. Maybe that was just his own doubts and uncertainties giving themselves a voice, but there _was_ something he was missing, some critical clue he had seen but hadn't recognized the importance of.

But what was it?

Cencerro's explanation, brief though it had been, had fit all the details perfectly. And she had confessed, too, which greatly limited her ability to do anything else. She was now securely locked away under heavy guard, her own personal guard similarly monitored, and until Bogo had a chance to thoroughly review and investigate her confession Cerdo and Corazón would not have their freedom either. It should have felt perfectly safe, but some paranoid twinge in his gut refused to ease.

What was he missing?

The edges of Bogo's vision seemed to dwindle as he considered the matter, turning everything he could over in his head. There was something about Cencerro's confession that refused to sit right with him, but was that really so odd? Mammals confessed to their crimes all the time, after all. Sometimes there was just nothing else that they could do, and rather than delay the inevitable they simply gave up. He'd have to accept it, give in to the idea that as his ability to focus had dwindled he had missed something.

 _You're growing old and forgetful, Lord Bogo. What is it to forget one more thing?_

The words repeated themselves in Bogo's mind and he stood without realizing he was going to do so as something clicked into place. "Commandant Totchli and Captain Nicholas," he said abruptly, ignoring the looks of mild surprise he had received, "There's something I need your help investigating."

"Now, sir?" Totchli asked, looking moderately puzzled at his sudden decision.

"Now," Bogo said.

Perhaps he was wrong. It was a mad idea, and if he was wrong it'd be the smart thing to step down from his position as captain general immediately. But if he was right, the danger wasn't even close to over.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Molasses is a fairly stable and calorie-rich product that has been made for hundreds of years, explaining why an army would have bothered to take it along; one of the last things you want is for your army to be so undernourished that it can't effectively fight.

Bogo pulls Cencerro away from the queen, rather than the other way around, as it is common protocol that members of the royal family are not to be touched beyond a handshake. This is becoming less of a rule of protocol in the modern world; while British tabloids in particular have tried making a furor out of recent incidents in which Queen Elizabeth was touched, spokespeople for the palace have made it clear that she did not take offense.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought!


	49. Chapter 49

Judy didn't know what she had expected after Bogo's ominous pronouncement. That he had somehow figured out one particular culprit, perhaps, and he wanted Nick and her along to make sure the mammal's arrest went smoothly. That had seemed like the best case scenario. At worst, perhaps his suspicions of Nick had flared up again, and it was all a ruse to get him locked in a cell. What actually happened, though, was far less dramatic than either of those possibilities. Bogo had simply brought the two of them to his carriage, and then began writing letter after letter in stony silence.

Judy had dared trying to interrupt him once, shortly after he had finished his first letter and sealed it with wax, but her question had been met with a response that was as curious as it was brusque. In answer to "Sir, is there anything Captain Nicholas and I can do while you work?" Bogo had said only, "I need the two of you to stay in my sight."

With that, the buffalo had dived back into his work, silent as ever. He had even rebuffed the queen's questioning before leaving her carriage; when she had asked him what he was thinking, Bogo had merely said, "I'll let you know as soon as I'm sure, your majesty."

His tone had been mildly apologetic, something Judy wasn't sure she had ever heard in his voice before, but the queen had accepted the answer with a slight nod. Excepting Judy's own futile attempt at getting an answer, Bogo had remained silent, the only noise in his carriage the slight creaks and groans as it moved and the whispering sound of the tip of his pen across paper. Standing where Bogo had left them, near the door to his carriage, Judy couldn't make out the surprisingly small and neat script her commanding officer wrote with, but he seemed to be agonizing over each word. More than once, he had crumpled up a sheet and thrown it aside to start with a fresh piece of paper, but it wasn't as though he was doing anything so interesting as to keep her attention. With Bogo's very strongly implied desire for silence, she couldn't even speak with Nick—whose features seemed set into an expression of mild interest as he stood at her side—and although she might have actually welcomed the sly words of the Nick she had imagined while exhausted, Judy was alone in her head.

It gave her time to think, and too much time at that. She tried to push aside her own desire to spend time alone with Nick—it just didn't seem fair that they had barely had a moment to themselves yet—and focus on the mystery of what Bogo was planning. He had been frustratingly vague when explaining how Cencerro had confessed, and while it certainly made sense for the ewe and Diego Cencerro to be co-conspirators considering their relation it still told Judy very little. She supposed it might have been possible for Diego Cencerro to sweep Phoenix with mercenaries after she and Nick had been locked up; it would explain why the city had looked oddly abandoned. Maybe he had enough loyal mammals to go from building to building, wearing the right uniforms and demanding that the residents went along quietly. But if that was the case, what had happened to the mammals who had lived in Phoenix? And why had Cencerro then chosen to use the banner of the Betrayer for his mercenary army?

Judy supposed it was possible that Diego Cencerro had been more monstrous than she had even thought—the crevasse surrounding Phoenix was too deep to see the bottom of, after all, and if he had thrown innocents down into those murky depths there'd be no sign of them—but it still made her uneasy. Bogo's own feelings, however, were impossible to determine. Sometime after her one question—it might have been mere minutes or maybe even hours, as time stretched interminably without any distractions—they were finally interrupted.

The simple routine of exchanging pass phrases with the guard who wanted entry was something to do, at least, and the possibility that Bogo was about to be attacked as the princess had been brought Judy back to full alertness. All it ended up being, though, was a report that in searching Alba Cencerro's belongings, the twin of the code book she and Nick had recovered from Diego Cencerro's office had been found. Bogo had grunted at this news, seeming completely unsurprised, and had asked if any messages had been recovered along with it. When the answer came back in the negative, Bogo seemed to lose all interest in the code book whatsoever, simply gesturing vaguely for it to be put on his desk and then returning to his work.

Shortly after that interruption, another one came, and with it Judy felt the same gathering tension in every fiber of her being. She felt somewhat abashed at it; it wasn't as though she _hoped_ that someone would attack Bogo, and with Diego Cencerro dead and Alba Cencerro securely locked away the risk didn't seem particularly great. Unless they hadn't acted alone, and she was keenly on edge as she went through the ritual of allowing another guard in.

Bogo's interest seemed piqued to a far greater extent by the autopsy report on Diego Cencerro, which confirmed what Nick had suspected. Some form of alchemy had turned just about everything in his head under the skin into sand, which must have killed him nearly instantly. There had been no trace of what had been used to do so, however, and the court alchemist could offer only guesses. Judy found herself listening keenly to the report, but it wasn't simply in an attempt to stave off the boredom of having nothing to do but watch Bogo see to his correspondences; she had a genuine interest in hearing the information. Perhaps she could also spot what Bogo had, or maybe even something that he hadn't.

She didn't, though.

Whatever truth or hunch Bogo had come across and decided to hold tightly to his chest, it wasn't obvious to her, and from the way Nick's expression didn't change throughout she supposed the same was true for him. Diego Cencerro had apparently committed suicide using a small alchemical device rather than be captured, but why had he killed himself while Alba Cencerro had given herself up? And what had his final words meant? He had tried calling Bogo something, but didn't seem capable of getting the words out. And then he had said nothing more than "bigger picture."

Judy herself certainly couldn't see the bigger picture, and while she tried puzzling the pieces together she was almost too deeply focused to notice when Bogo's carriage came to a gently stop sometime after the guard who presented the autopsy report had left. At that, Bogo looked up at last. "Check if we're outside Phoenix now," he said, and Judy eagerly obeyed the order largely to have something to do.

After first checking with the guard keeping pace outside the carriage that all was clear and opening the door, Judy saw Phoenix again with her own eyes. The city looked largely the same as it had the last time she had seen it, with the notable exception that the army surrounding it was gone. It was more than a little eerie, seeing the settlement so close again, the carriage no more than three hundred meters away from the massive crevasse that surrounded it, without any sign of life. There didn't seem to be any sounds whatsoever coming from Phoenix, neither of residents or invaders, and when Judy reported that it was all clear, Bogo nodded. "Phoenix really does appear abandoned, then?" he asked.

"Yes sir," Judy replied crisply, "And the bridge is still out."

 _Exactly as I reported_ was an addition she thought but didn't say; if nothing else Bogo could see the truth of her words with his own eyes. "Then Alba Cencerro seems to have been telling the truth about some things," Bogo said, and then he pushed himself up from his desk and approached the door.

He began barking out orders to one of the guards, demanding that sentries be posted circling Phoenix, and that preparations be made for repairing the bridge. "But no one crosses until I order it," he added, "Is that clear?"

The guard snapped to his orders eagerly, but if the simplicity of his orders was clear to him they still didn't make much sense to Judy. It didn't seem unreasonable to expect that it was some kind of trap, but of what sort Judy couldn't say. The wastelands of the Outer Baronies were simply too empty to have anything to hide behind, and if mammals tried popping out of hidden tunnels from the ruins under Phoenix Bogo simply had too many mammals on his side to make it anything but a slaughter at the choke points.

Surely, though, it made sense to send at least a few scouts into Phoenix to investigate, whether it was by repairing the bridge or sending someone on a reverse of the escape that Judy and Nick had made from Phoenix. But Bogo didn't seem inclined to do so, instead spending perhaps another fifteen minutes finishing a letter before sealing it with wax as he had the others. "It's time," Bogo said, standing up, "Take these."

He gestured at the neat little stack of letters he had left on his desk, and Judy picked them up carefully. The one on top was addressed to the queen, but there was also one addressed simply to a Maria (which Judy suspected might be one of his generals), one to the princess, one to Tzitz Quit, and rather surprisingly, one to her. "I'm afraid I can't explain everything now," Bogo said, seeming to catch the expression that crossed Judy's face when she saw her own name in Bogo's neat script across one sealed letter, "But I want to tell you this: in the letter I wrote to the queen, I say you have my full confidence and approval for whatever decision you're about to make."

"Sir?" Judy asked, not even trying to keep the confusion out of her voice.

"You'll understand," Bogo said with a strange sort of finality to his words.

Judy exchanged a quick look with Nick, who seemed as puzzled as she was. Bogo didn't seem to have noticed and stood up straighter behind his desk. "Come with me now," he said, and he walked for the door.

Once they were out of the carriage, Bogo seemed to completely ignore the controlled chaos of the army setting up their circle around Phoenix, his attention focused solely on where he was walking. To Judy he looked almost like a condemned prisoner breathing fresh air for the last time on the way to his execution. His behavior was baffling, and Judy felt her skin crawl beneath her fur. It was almost like watching Diego Cencerro's last moments, but Judy couldn't say how. Bogo seemed to be in full control of himself, and he walked slowly but purposefully through the throngs of members of the City Guard before stopping in front of a rather unremarkable carriage. "How is he?" Bogo asked, nodding toward the carriage's door.

The guards outside the carriage snapped to attention. "Awake, sir," one of them said.

Bogo nodded. "We'll be going in to see him," he said, and with no small amount of trepidation Judy followed him.

The interior of the carriage was rather unremarkable compared to Bogo's, and positively utilitarian compared to the queen's. It was nothing more than rough wooden walls and floors, windowless and with a single alchemical torch in a cheap fixture overhead. It was barely large enough for Bogo to stand in, and completely empty except for a single piece of furniture, a bed with a rather fat pig in it. Judy recognized the pig as Esteban Cerdo, one of the members of the queen's council, although it took her a moment. The pig looked positively ill, and the harsh light of the alchemical torch gave his pink skin an unhealthy pallor to it.

"Lord Cerdo was poisoned before I could question him," Bogo said to Judy, as if that explained anything before he turned to face the pig, "I'd like to speak with you now."

Cerdo's eyes, almost lost beneath the fat folds of his face, were nevertheless bright and alert, and he nodded. "Anything I can do to help, Lord Bogo," he said, his voice somewhat weak, "And is that Commandant Totchli and Captain Nicholas with you?"

Bogo nodded. "Lady Cencerro has confessed to her guilt in the plot to kill the princess," he said, speaking slowly, "And to having been involved with her cousin Diego's scheme in Phoenix. She's working on writing a confession as we speak."

"Lady Cencerro?" Cerdo asked, his face resolving itself into an expression of confusion, "I can't believe she'd do such a thing!"

"Indeed," Bogo replied.

Judy got the sense that Bogo was examining Cerdo's face with intense scrutiny, but what thoughts were running through the buffalo's head she couldn't even guess at. Why had he wanted her and Nick to be present for this? Nick was looking at Cerdo with puzzlement himself, as though he was also wondering why Bogo was so eager to talk to the pudgy and bed-bound pig.

"But you've caught the culprit," Cerdo continued, "I suppose congratulations are in order, Lord Bogo. I suppose all that's left to do now is mop up Diego Cencerro's mess in Phoenix and put anyone we find to justice before we head home and put this terrible crime behind us."

"No one's going into Phoenix," Bogo said, "It's a trap."

Cerdo chuckled, and suddenly his voice didn't sound so weak. "Obstinate as always, Lord Bogo. You _will_ order your troops to advance into Phoenix. And stay where you are for now."

"I will," Bogo repeated.

Judy's attention flew from Cerdo to Bogo, utterly confused about what could make Bogo's entire demeanor change so entirely. "Sir, what's going on?" Judy asked.

"What gave it away?" Cerdo asked, his question directed at Bogo.

"Lady Cencerro said I'd be getting a message about Alfonso giving her up," Bogo replied.

He hadn't moved from where he was standing, and Judy herself felt almost rooted in place. Cerdo had casually given the head of the City Guard an order, and Bogo seemed to have every intention of obeying it. What's more, he was speaking as though he was behind the attacks.

"All of that from so little a slip up?" Cerdo said, shaking his head with an expression of amazement, "You really are quite good, Lord Bogo. Please, walk me through your logic."

"Lady Cencerro couldn't have known I sent a message to the prison asking to interrogate Alfonso further," Bogo said, "And Alfonso being involved simply doesn't make any sense. But the last time I went to the prison, _you_ were there."

Cerdo nodded sagely. "And from that, you made the leap to... what?" he asked.

His words were almost polite, even though Judy couldn't help but stare at him in disbelief. "You had some kind of power over him. And over me. I remembered something. 'You're growing old and forgetful, Lord Bogo.' You're the one who said that to me. I've been having difficulty with my focus, but you're the only mammal I've spoken to where I completely lose time talking to you," Bogo said.

Cerdo sighed. "The process isn't perfect, I admit, and there are side effects. I _could_ have made you perfectly loyal to me, but then the queen surely would have noticed how quickly your demeanor changed. Easier to just edit your memories as necessary and pump you for information. But—"

"Lord Cerdo, you're under arrest," Judy interrupted firmly, taking a step toward the pig's bed.

Nick threw out a warning paw, but Judy ignored him. "You've confessed to your crimes and—"

"Oh!" Cerdo said, interrupting with a laugh, " _This_ was your plan? Bringing these two along to spot if I tried controlling you?"

"Yes," Bogo replied.

His speech had a certain dullness to it that Judy didn't like. "Commandant Totchli and Captain Nicholas together could kill me, if necessary. And Totchli has signed orders to the queen approving that course of action."

Cerdo almost looked impressed. "You clearly planned quite well," he said, "You really do have a remarkable investigative mind, Lord Bogo."

"Get up slowly," Judy ordered.

She had pulled a set of restraints off her belt, but was standing a few feet away from Cerdo's bed out of an abundance of caution. Bogo was still as a statue by the door, and Nick had inched a bit away from the buffalo. "I suppose you thought that they were too new for me to have any power over them?" Cerdo asked, even as he sat up and got out of the bed.

Bogo nodded. "You were wrong," Cerdo said simply, "Commandant Totchli, you don't want to restrain me."

Judy blinked down at the restraints in her paw. Why had she pulled them from her belt? It had seemed so important a moment ago to restrain Lord Cerdo, but surely that wasn't necessary. She felt foolish to have even considered the possibility. Nick was gaping at her in disbelief, but she couldn't imagine why. Cerdo was guilty, certainly, but there was no need to restrain him. Judy frowned. That didn't quite make sense, but it _felt_ right. "You don't want to restrain me either," Cerdo said to Nick, who had slowly started advancing toward the bed.

Nick froze in place, and Cerdo turned back to Bogo with a smile across his face. "Had you picked almost any other two mammals, your plan might actually have worked," he said, "But no matter. I'll just need to keep a closer eye on you while—"

Nick had made a sudden pouncing lunge at Cerdo, who squealed in alarm and clumsily rolled across the floor. "Protect me!" he demanded.

As though of its own volition, Judy's paw went down to her belt and drew her sword. She turned and faced her opponent. Nick. Something seemed to war in her mind, and it sent an agonizing spike of pain through her head. Nick seemed to swim in and out of focus, her focus snapping between two extremes. She _had_ to protect Cerdo. But she couldn't hurt Nick. Cerdo's protection was more important than anything. But it was _Nick_ standing in front of her, a horrified expression splitting his face as he stared at the sabre in her paws. "Judy, please," he begged, his voice small, "You don't have to do this."

"She does, actually," Cerdo said.

He was standing behind Bogo now, who had drawn his own weapon and taken a single menacing step toward Nick. "I am curious, though, as to why you aren't affected. The torcs worked on every test subject I tried."

Nick was holding out his open palms beseechingly toward Judy as he tried to shrink away from her, but in an instant he was against the wall with nowhere to run. "I must just be special like my mother always said I was," Nick said, with what struck Judy as a weak attempt at his usual charm.

"You must not have worn it," Cerdo said, nodding to himself, "Is that a fake around your neck, then? I should have seen that possibility. Ah, well. Another alchemist is too useful to pass up. Capture him."

Judy wanted to fight the order, but it was so pernicious in her head that she couldn't. Cerdo was simply asking her to capture Nick, after all. Not hurt him. _But what happens next?_ she thought. An answer didn't come. Didn't matter. She had to capture him. "Just give up, Nick," Judy said, "Please."

That'd be the best solution, after all. All Nick had to do was give in without a struggle and everything would be fine. There were only a couple feet between them now, and Judy smiled at him. "Please, Nick. No one has to get hurt," she said soothingly.

"You know, I'm not sure I believe that," Nick said, his eyes darting from her to Bogo.

"Come on, Nick," Judy said, "You can—"

Nick suddenly dove at her, and Judy swung her blade awkwardly, trying to hit him with the flat of it. She felt something pull at her belt, and then the pressure was gone. She spun around to see Nick on all fours, rolling to the side to avoid a crushing attempt by Bogo to catch him. Cerdo had pushed himself into a corner, away from the action, but Nick wasn't going for him. "Lord Bogo, the door!" Judy warned even as Nick dove at it.

Bogo lunged again, but the fox slipped through his grasp as though he had been greased, swinging the door open and squeezing out. "Catch him!" Cerdo roared, his voice high and tight.

Judy slipped beneath Bogo's arms, far faster to get out the door and chase after Nick, barely noticing the look of surprise on the faces of the guards she passed. Nick was running flat out toward the crevasse just outside of Phoenix, and Judy called on herself to run even faster.

But she couldn't.

The distance between them, rather than shortening, was getting longer. And dramatically so; Nick was running far faster than a fox should be capable of moving. Judy reached down to her belt to grab a cheetah quauhxicalli, but her paw groped fruitlessly at nothing. She suddenly remembered the tug at her belt she had felt as Nick had dodged her and realized what he had done; he had stolen all of her quauhxicallis.

Even though she had no chance of catching him, Judy pushed herself as hard as she could, shouting for someone to catch the fox. But Nick seemed to be moving as fast as lightning, little more than a red blur as he sped for the edge. When he got there, he froze, turning from her to the yawning emptiness below and then back again. Terror and despair seemed to war across his face as Judy closed the distance, his fear of heights keeping him trapped.

"Come on, Nick," Judy called as the distance between them narrowed to a matter of yards, "Give up."

No one else had dared interrupt, a loose circle of guards having formed a respectful distance away from either of them. Nick shook his head. "This isn't you, Carrots," he said, and he swallowed hard.

Before Judy could even begin to respond, he closed his eyes and jumped into the abyss. By the time Judy reached the edge there was no sign of him, her ears full of the roar of water pouring over the edge of the other side of the chasm. "Nick!" she screamed, and she could feel tears welling in her eyes.

She knew for herself just how far down the bottom of the chasm was. It was almost certainly too far for any mammal to survive, and she hadn't wanted to kill him. Only capture him. That was what she had to do, after all; the command seeming to pound in her head. An eternity seemed to pass as she stood there, looking into the inky black depths far below where she stood.

"He jumped," Bogo's voice suddenly interrupted.

Judy turned to look at him. He must have run after her, Cerdo tucked beneath one massive arm. As she watched, Bogo set the pig down. "He stole all of Totchli's quauhxicallis," Cerdo said, "He might have survived."

A tiny flicker of hope flared to life in Judy's chest. That was true; Nick had stolen all of her quauhxicallis, not just the one that he had used to run so fast. Perhaps one intended to make him more durable would have let him survive the fall, or perhaps he could have used his alchemy. It was entirely possible that he might still be alive, that she would be able to find him and hold him tight and tell him how much he meant to her.

And for her to capture him.

"He's a loose end," Cerdo sighed, pitching his voice so low that Judy doubted anyone else could hear him, "That'll need to be dealt with."

"I can find him," Judy volunteered eagerly.

She wanted nothing more than to see Nick again, to be able to show him he had been wrong to run away. Cerdo looked at her for a moment before he spoke. "You hate that fox," Cerdo observed, frowning over the chasm that Nick had vanished into, "You hate him, and you'll do anything to find him. I'll give you a torc to put around his neck so you can order him back. Kill him if you can't."

Judy's vision seemed oddly blurry, and she wiped at her eyes. Her paw came away wet, but she didn't know why. She had an order, and it was her duty as a member of the City Guard to fulfill it. There would be a pleasure in it, too, she was sure. After all, there was no one she loathed more than Nick.


	50. Chapter 50

Something was very wrong, but Bogo couldn't quite put a finger on what it was. Everything seemed to be as it should, considering what had just happened. The queen and princess were both safe, and he and Commandant Totchli were in Lord Cerdo's carriage, the pig resting in the bed that was the lone piece of furniture. The traitorous fox Nicholas, in a shocking act of disloyalty, had... Had what, exactly?

Bogo frowned as he considered the problem. He could remember, very distinctly, that he had brought Totchli and Nicholas along as he went to question Cerdo. For some foolish reason, he had suspected that the pig might have some involvement in Lady Cencerro's plot, but of course he had been wrong. But what had Nicholas done? The fox was a traitor, he was sure of that. He had a half-written order in his hooves proclaiming that Nicholas had been stripped of his rank in the City Guard and was to be killed on sight should he be so unwise as to try returning. But what had the fox actually done?

"Is there a problem, Lord Bogo?" Cerdo asked.

Bogo looked up from his writing to look at the pig. Totchli was standing by the bed, quite still, and Cerdo had a small half-smile across his face. After the traitor had thrown himself off the edge of the crevasse that defined Phoenix's perimeter, they had returned to the carriage Cerdo was recovering in, not answering any questions from the guardsmammals who had been close enough to see it happen. Something about the chain of events nagged at Bogo, and he tried putting his thoughts into words. "Why did Nicholas run away and jump?" he asked, "It doesn't make sense."

"He's a traitor," Totchli said, all but spitting the words with a vehemence that was surprising to see on a rabbit, "Almost as bad as the Betrayer."

Cerdo chuckled dryly. "It's always interesting to see what associations form," he said, looking first to Totchli before turning his attention back to Bogo, "But I must be ever so careful about what I say. Totchli, I need you to go retrieve a torc from the City Guard's supplies. This one."

Using a scrap of paper, he scribbled out a series of letters and numbers, which Bogo recognized as the sequence that uniquely identified a torc. "Make sure it's this one, or it won't work," he said as he gave the slip to her.

Totchli nodded, her expression hard, and she left the carriage at once. Something about the way that Totchli, a commandant in the City Guard, had obeyed a mammal who had never served seemed like it should have bothered Bogo, but it didn't. Bogo could feel his frown deepen, and became intensely aware of Cerdo's eyes upon him. "My apologies, Lord Bogo," Cerdo said, the words seeming perfectly sincere, "This must be confusing for you, I know. The process isn't perfect, but what is?"

The pig raised one hoof in a philosophical shrug before continuing. "But for now, I'm going to need to know everything you do. I want you to stand there and tell me every preparation you made," he said, "Was it only Totchli you gave a letter to?"

Bogo's head suddenly felt as though it had been struck by a bolt of lightning. It was as though his mind was being torn in pieces, and it was all he could do not to cry out. He might have fallen, but it felt as though his hooves had become rooted to the floor, completely immovable. Memories poured into his head, pieces of a puzzle he hadn't even realized he had been missing. There had been so many conversations alone with Cerdo, so many moments he had been ordered to forget. A deep and boiling rage began gathering in the pit of his stomach, and he wanted nothing more than to step forward put an end to the threat the pig posed.

But his feet still wouldn't move.

Bogo wanted to refuse to answer Cerdo's questions, to give him nothing to work with. But instead his mouth opened and words came out. "Yes," he said.

Cerdo smiled. "I have to be more specific, don't I? Did you write other letters?"

"Yes," Bogo said, his traitorous mouth giving himself up.

"Ah," Cerdo said, "So you wrote letters but didn't give them to anyone. Who were they for?"

"The queen, the princess, Tzitz Quit, Commandant Totchli, and my wife Maria."

"Where are those letters now?"

"Totchli has all of them," Bogo said, again being betrayed by his own body.

It was a kind of horror he had never felt before, to have no control over what he did or said. He desperately wanted to move and he couldn't. He couldn't even stop himself from talking. "That was a poor decision," Cerdo said, "But understandable, I suppose. If you were wrong, surely you wouldn't want evidence that made you look crazy spread out to the rest of the kingdom. But that's one less concern, at least. Now there's only the fox, and I'm sure Totchli will be quite capable of following up on that."

Cerdo seemed to spot something in Bogo's face. "Was there something you wanted to say, Lord Bogo?" he asked, his tone mild.

"You've betrayed your queen and your kingdom," Bogo said.

There was a kind of fierce pleasure in speaking the words he wanted to, even knowing it was solely because Cerdo had allowed it. "You're a traitor worse than the Betrayer, and I'd stop you if I could."

"But you can't," Cerdo said, sounding as though he was simply reminding Bogo of a trivial fact.

Still, they seemed to cut down to Bogo's heart. _Knowing_ that he was being manipulated only made it worse. He wanted to think that it was simply the result of Cerdo's command, but the justification felt weak. False. He couldn't stop Cerdo's plan, whatever it was. "And I wouldn't call what I'm doing traitorous. I've never told you why I've gone to all this effort, have I Lord Bogo?"

Bogo's head was full of memories that hadn't been there before, memories that filled in all sorts of gaps. How Cerdo had taken control of Jaime's charge and made him allow Bogo to strike him, and then ordered Bogo, Corazón, and Cencerro to forget it. How he had been forced to overlook the obvious connection between Cerdo and torcs, and so many other pieces of evidence to twist his investigation and force him along a single path. Even how, upon his last visit to Oztoyehuatl's Jail, Cerdo had gotten him to allow him to visit Alfonso in what could have only been preparations to alter his testimony. The one thing that wasn't in those memories was an explanation of any sort. Cerdo had been rather tight-lipped about that, simply giving Bogo orders without ever explaining why.

"No," Bogo said at last.

"Then perhaps I should," Cerdo said, "I could order you to believe in my cause, but I'd like to think you'd support my plan if you knew all the details."

"I doubt it," Bogo said, and Cerdo chuckled again.

"Yes, well, that can change," he said, and the casual nature of the words made them all the more sinister in Bogo's mind.

"It started with the work of my grandfather and father," Cerdo said, "When torcs were first invented, they were supposed to save the kingdom from ever falling into civil war again. How could it? If citizens can't hurt the City Guard—and surely you're not so naive as to believe it was ever about preventing citizens from hurting each other—then rebellion is impossible. Oh, the City Guard itself could split, I suppose, but the mammals at the top have the same protection as the City Guard itself. With careful management, things should have stayed stable."

Cerdo actually jumped out of his bed to begin pacing, although Bogo couldn't help but notice that the pig was quite careful to stay outside Bogo's reach. "But that hasn't been the case. The prince consort was assassinated, of that I'm sure. And that was really what set me down this path," he said, and the smile he gave Bogo was almost disarming.

"If a member of the royal family could be killed, that was all the evidence I needed to prove that the torcs simply don't work as they should. And surely you've seen the same for yourself as a member of the City Guard. Mammals still commit crimes and murder each other. The more obvious murders, the crimes of passion, result in the murderer dying as well as the victim, but there are more subtle ones too. Poisoning, or death by a thousand cuts where each cut is inflicted by a different mammal, or even forcing the victim to kill someone else and so die themselves. Terrible crimes that thugs on the street can and sometimes do get away with. And so I realized a simple truth that no one else could see."

Cerdo's voice was becoming more passionate, more beseeching, and Bogo wondered if Cerdo had practiced this little performance specifically for his benefit. The pig certainly did seem to enjoy the sound of his own voice, but Bogo couldn't stop listening and absorbing every word. "A civil war is inevitable. It's the endless cycle of history, playing out as it always has. Sometimes the enemy is external, and sometimes it's internal, but there will always be a next war. Torcs can't stop that, and if anything they're only making it worse. If a civil war were to start now, it would be the bloodiest war ever fought, the torcs making the death toll far worse than any previous conflict.

"And then I realized the solution. The problem wasn't predators or prey, the original inhabitants of Zootopia or the ones who came as part of Oveja I's conflict, the rich or the poor. It's simply in the nature of mammals themselves. We form our own petty little divisions and lash out at other groups, no matter how well anyone tries making peace. And any solution that could be tried won't work in the long run. If the poor rise up and kill the rich, it's only a matter of time before a new wealthy class emerges. If chimeras are wiped out, some new group will take their place as being despised freaks of nature. It's a problem without a solution.

"Until I realized that the answer was that torcs didn't go far enough. They can change the behavior of mammals, of that we have plenty of proof. There are fewer violent crimes now than there were before their invention, and my grandfather is to be applauded for that. But the only permanent solution is to change the _nature_ of mammals. And for that, I've accomplished something no one else has."

Cerdo's smile widened, the pig seeming incredibly pleased with himself. To Bogo, his words sounded like the deranged ramblings of a mammal cursed to madness by the gods, but Cerdo's sincerity shone through like a beacon. Whatever he was leading up to, he believed in it fully. "I invented a new kind of torc, one that could be disguised as the standard torc. One that would affect the _mind_ rather than the body. But even with alchemy, I can't impress enough upon you how difficult my torcs are to make. Even if every alchemist in the kingdom devoted themselves to churning them out, it'd take too long to make enough for every mammal in the kingdom and roll them out. The problem, you see, was that I couldn't rely on the alchemical array that surrounds the Middle Baronies and makes regular torcs work. The genius of my grandfather was that it allowed each torc to be quite simple and easily made, whereas mine are unimaginably more complex as a result of not having that array to use. But I planned slowly, converting mammals to my cause as I tested my new torcs. I had to be very careful, of course, because if anyone figured out what I was doing it'd all be over.

"Once I had worked out the major problems with the design, it was time to figure out how to deploy them. And it occurred to me that Phoenix would be the perfect test. So I spent years constructing a new array around Phoenix to test the same basic concept as my torcs to bind mammals to my will. If it worked, after all, I could modify the array surrounding Zootopia itself to do the same and usher in a new golden age. Imagine it!"

Bogo did. He imagined a world of dutiful mammals who wouldn't even so much as litter, let alone steal or murder. Mammals who could be commanded, as Cerdo had commanded him, to do whatever their master ordered. A world where Cerdo was unchallenged and unquestioned. "You want to make everyone your slaves," Bogo said, not even trying to hide his scorn.

"Slaves?" Cerdo asked, sounding as though Bogo had wounded his pride, "Certainly not. The citizens of Zootopia will live their lives as they always have. I'll simply make the idea of committing crime of any sort literally unthinkable to them. It'll be an endless time of peace completely unmatched in history."

"And what about the queen and the princess?" Bogo challenged, "What about Jaime and Jorge de Cuvier and the Cencerros?"

"I haven't been able to get the royal family under my control yet," Cerdo acknowledged with a dip of his head, "But if I had to sacrifice one of them to get the other, so be it. A single life, even that of a member of the royal family, isn't worth the millions of life that I'll improve. And as for the others, the same applies. Small sacrifices to get the pieces where I want them."

Bogo wasn't sure what he was going to do with everything he was learning. He wasn't even sure if he _could_ do anything with it. He still couldn't move his legs to go anywhere, and it seemed inevitable that Cerdo would exert his control over him again. But perhaps Cerdo would make a mistake. Perhaps the pig would give him an opportunity, and Bogo wanted to be able to capitalize on it. "So your plan was to get the royal family out to Phoenix all along?" he challenged.

Cerdo laughed. "It's a nice bonus, but the real prize is the army. By now, you must realize what happened to the residents of Phoenix."

With a terrible certainty, Bogo thought that he did. "You've already tested your array once," he said, and Cerdo's approving nod made his flesh crawl under his fur.

"I did," Cerdo said, "And it worked flawlessly. Every single mammal in Phoenix—excepting Nicholas and Totchli, safe as they were in a cell that blocked alchemy—was bent to my will. The citizens of Phoenix and the army that surrounded it are one and the same. They're hiding in the ruins under the city now, if you were wondering."

"So what happens next?" Bogo asked.

"Once you order your army to enter Phoenix to investigate, it gets activated again. When the bulk of the City Guard is mine, putting the royal family under my command will be trivial. And then I can modify the array around the Middle Baronies with official orders, and if anyone thinks to report it as suspicious my loyalists in the City Guard will prevent anything from stopping the work. You see, I have no need to declare myself king or emperor. The simple knowledge that I will have ensured Zootopia's continued stability is reward enough. I alone have the vision to break the cycle of history!" Cerdo said, raising his arms in a victorious pose.

Bogo wasn't sure if it was Cerdo's influence over him or not, but some part of him said that Cerdo's plan _would_ work. It was monstrous, and no matter what the pig might say it amounted to nothing less than enslaving Zootopia's population to his will, but he had planned it well. Each step had been gradual, and now it was so far along that it didn't seem possible for anyone to stop it. "So what do you think?" Cerdo asked, "And please, be honest."

Before Bogo could answer, the door to the carriage opened and Totchli returned, a gleaming gold torc in her paws. "Hold that thought," Cerdo said, raising a single pudgy finger, and suddenly Bogo's mouth seemed glued shut.

"Here it is," Totchli said, presenting the torc to Cerdo for his inspection.

He held it carefully, inspecting the letters and numbers engraved along the inside of it along with the complicated patterns, and nodded at last. "Excellent," he said, and then he reached to his own torc and pulled off one of the baubles that hung from it.

"You'll need this," he said, affixing it to Totchli's torc, "Now, if you can place that torc around Nicholas's neck, you'll be able to order him to return with you should you simply _will_ him to obey as you speak."

"And if I can't, I kill him," Totchli said.

It was a disturbing way for her to agree, particularly after Bogo had seen the way the two of them had acted around each other. But that, too, must have been an acceptable sacrifice in Cerdo's mind. "Only if you can't capture him," Cerdo admonished, "Alchemists are too valuable to waste."

Totchli nodded with what looked to Bogo like considerable reluctance. "Before you head after him, though, I want those letters Bogo gave you."

Bogo watched as Totchli obeyed at once, and Cerdo flipped through them before suddenly stopping, a frown darkening his features. "You said there was one for the queen, did you not?"

Bogo's mouth instantly came unstuck. "Yes," he said.

"That thieving fox must have stolen it from Totchli along with the quauhxicallis," Cerdo said, shaking his head, "This is exactly the sort of behavior I plan on stopping."

It was an almost childishly petulant complaint, but a faint ray of hope suddenly sparked in Bogo's chest. The fate of the kingdom seemed to rest upon the shoulders of a fox who might not even still be alive, considering the fall he had taken, but it was better than nothing. Perhaps, if he was patient and careful, there would be something he could do to help Nicholas if he ever returned.

"That only makes it more important to find him," Cerdo said, shaking his head as he stuffed the letters into an interior pocket of his clothes, "Totchli, I want you to head after him at once. Don't stop searching until you find him or his corpse."

The rabbit nodded, and after carefully stashing the torc Cerdo had given her she was out the door again. "Now that we're alone again, I believe you have a question to answer?" Cerdo said, turning his attention back to Bogo.

"I'd stop you if I could," Bogo said, repeating his earlier words.

Cerdo sighed. "Unfortunate, but not surprising, considering how you're rather set in your ways. I admit, it would give me some pleasure to hear you say that you agree with me completely, but I still need to have the queen trust you, Lord Bogo. For a little longer, at least," Cerdo said, "Forget this entire conversation."

Bogo blinked at the pig. It had happened again; his focus had drifted off so completely that he had completely lost the thread of whatever Cerdo had been saying. From the pig's mild expression, it probably hadn't been anything particularly important—Cerdo did love to drone on and on—but it seemed it really _was_ time for him to retire.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Well, here we are! This story is somewhat different from my others in that once the central mystery is exposed, it keeps going. As I've previously mentioned, this story is a bit of an experiment for me, as all my stories are, so I hope that it works. A lot of the details of Cerdo's plans are exposed here, and hopefully as details continue to come out the story will still be an enjoyable read.

Back in chapter 32, there's an off-hand reference from Cencerro that Cerdo's father was particularly good at making torcs, which is referenced again here.

The suspicious death of the prince consort, the queen's husband and the princess's mother, has been referenced a few times although never definitively said to have been murder. Cerdo, at least, seems to think it was.

In chapter 8, there's a description of the gruesome result of an elephant stepping on a shrew, and consequently being flattened themselves by their torc. Cerdo's points about the flaws and deficiencies of torcs are actually things that readers have brought up as well; I was quite happy to see that some of the inherent problems were spotted ahead of the villain discussing them.

This chapter also sees something of a title drop, as Cerdo uses the phrase "the endless cycle" to refer to his belief that civil war will inevitably follow a time of peace.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to comment, I'd love to know what you thought!


	51. Chapter 51

Judy had worn a pair of gloves for her pursuit of the hated fox. There was a practical reason for it, of course. The rough fish leather would prevent her paws from getting chewed up by sharp rocks as she climbed. But she hadn't brought the gloves for purely practical reasons.

She had brought the gloves because she couldn't bear to look at her left arm.

Judy loathed what the fox had done to her. It made her sick to even catch a glimpse of her terribly wrong paw and fingers without a glove to hide them. Her entire arm was disgusting, a mockery of what it should have been. The fox had tainted her, gleefully transforming a part of her into a copy of himself. The only thing Judy wanted more than to bring the fox to justice was to cut off her monstrous arm, to sever it completely from herself. It'd be better to have no arm at all rather than a fox arm, but until she caught him she still needed it.

But that didn't mean she liked it.

With the arm fully covered by her sleeve and the paw hidden beneath a glove, Judy could almost pretend that the fox had never mutilated her. Almost. But then one of the pads covering the palm and fingers of the paw that had been attached to her would rub against the glove and she'd become painfully aware of it again. The sensation was utterly alien, and Judy hated it.

But she wouldn't let it distract her. She focused on her task, clinging to a strong rope as she was lowered down into the depths of the crevasse surrounding Phoenix. The light of her alchemical torch was a pitiful pool of light, barely doing anything to illuminate her surroundings. Even the light of day above her seemed to be growing dim and faded as she went lower and lower, searching all the while for any sign of the fox's presence. She didn't see anything; besides the occasional cross-section of some long-forgotten tunnel or building, there was nothing but rock and dirt.

Gradually, at the point where Judy was beginning to wonder if even the alchemist-made rope would be too long to support its own weight, a foul-smelling body of water came into view beneath her. The water rippled and danced sluggishly, the force of the waterfall high above reduced to little more than a mist so far below the surface, and there was a nasty oily sheen to it. As Judy got closer and closer the sour and brackish smell of it started to become overwhelming, making her breathe through her mouth. _Nick was going to purify it_ , a thought came unbidden into her head.

Judy shook her head violently to clear it, sending her swaying back and forth at the end of the rope. The fox might have _claimed_ he was going to purify the water, but surely it had been a lie, like everything else he had said. He had played her for a fool, spinning an elaborate and almost certainly entirely fabricated story about his youth, and all to cover his true depravity. He was the worst sort of mammal, one who would work for a monster like Alfonso of New Quimichin. The fox had said he no longer worked for the vicious crime lord, but Judy felt in her heart it was another lie.

There would be a reckoning for his many lies, Judy knew, and the thought was a small comfort as she was lowered until her feet nearly skimmed the foul water. Judy gave the rope two sharp tugs—she was much too far down to even see the burly rhino and horse who had been playing out the line, let alone for them to hear her call out—and her downward motion stopped.

Judy dangled for a moment, playing her torch across the surface of the water, making it turn a sickly greenish-brown in the light, before she spotted what she was looking for. There was a narrow beach of sorts on the other side of the crevasse, made of slimy-looking rocks worn smooth by countless years. She kicked off from the wall as hard as she could, feeling the tough fibers of the rope moving within her grasp, and just barely managed to get a hold of the far wall. She pulled a spare alchemical torch out from her pack, tied it to the end of the rope, and then drove a steel climbing spike into a crack in the rock face. When she was satisfied it wouldn't move, Judy lashed the rope to the anchor and then climbed down to the beach as carefully as she could.

Once she was on the pebbly beach, which was just as slimy as it had seemed, Judy turned and looked back over her shoulder. With the torch tied to it, the rope was a beacon in the darkness, vanishing into nothingness as it rose toward the surface. It'd have to do as her landmark to guide herself back, and Judy did her best to fix it in her memory. With that resolved, Judy played out her torch over the stones of the beach, searching for any sign of the fox.

She wasn't entirely sure what she was expecting; but for all she knew the fox had been unlucky and slammed into the beach at the end of his uncontrolled descent. If he hadn't hit water, not even the quauhxicallis he had stolen would have been enough to save him. But if he _had_ hit the water... _Nick might be alive._

Judy shook her head again to clear it. She shouldn't be thinking about him like that, she knew. The hope that had timidly blossomed in her chest had only been the hope of catching him herself; it would have been the ultimate disappointment if she had nothing more to do than collect his battered and broken remains. So she walked along the beach in the direction the slight current seemed to be moving, fighting against her impatience to be as careful and meticulous as possible in her search with her torch.

After about half an hour, with no kind of sign of the fox, Judy wondered what she would do next. Her orders had been clear; she was to search for the fox until she found him or his corpse. Even if that took days.

Or months.

Or years.

Judy knew she couldn't give up, and so she continued onward, doing her best to be as thorough as possible. The strange reflections off the surface of the oily water made that difficult; it threw up shimmering rainbows of incongruous beauty, forming dazzling and amorphous shapes that refracted across the dull gray stone of the crevasse's wall. It made it so that her first thought, when she saw the glimmer of light, was that she had simply come across a puddle of water that had pooled in a shallow depression on the beach above the waterline. But as she got closer, Judy saw that it had to be something else. Something metallic and shiny.

Her heart began beating faster as she recognized it as a City Guard breastplate, and she hurried over to it, playing her light across it. The breastplate was scratched and battered, but it was the breastplate alone, with no sign of the mammal who had worn it. Except that the buckles meant to keep it secure had been undone.

Judy instantly realized the implication. If the fox had died on impact, or after bouncing down the unforgiving rocks of the crevasse's wall, it was possible he might have been separated from his breastplate. But the breastplate would be a caved-in and gore-soaked mess in that case, the straps cut or snapped by sharp rocks. But they had been undone, not broken. Which meant a mammal had been alive to undo them.

Judy picked up the heavy piece of armor, running her light carefully over it. There wasn't any blood caked to the breastplate, inside or out, but there was a coppery strand of fur stuck in the joint between the front and back pieces. Judy pulled it loose and looked at it, but she didn't have to roll up her left sleeve to know that the color was a perfect match. There could be no doubt about what it all meant.

The fox was still alive.

A frown suddenly crossed Judy's face as something else occurred to her. Why had he left the piece of armor on the shore? Surely he could have simply dropped it in the water and let its considerable weight take it to the bottom. Judy tried picturing what the fox must have done as he landed in the water. Perhaps the air had been knocked out of him and even with his physical strength increased by her quauhxicallis he had struggled under the weight of his clothes. But then he would have removed the breastplate in the water and lost it forever. So he must have removed it after he went ashore, but why? No matter how she scoured her brain, Judy couldn't think of a reason. The fox was many things, but stupid wasn't among them. He was clever, after all; it was one of the things she—

It was one of the things she hated about him.

He was a smug and condescending jerk, so wrapped up in his own love for himself that he didn't care about anyone or anything else. He was a criminal who delighted in crime, a liar who delighted in lying. How many lies had he told her in the short time she had known him? He had even dared to _kiss_ her, and the thought of it turned her stomach more than even her ruined arm.

Why had he kissed her, though?

Something just didn't seem to fit no matter how Judy puzzled it over in her head. She didn't like the fox, and she never had. Judy had loathed him from the minute they had met, her dislike of him only becoming more pronounced once she had learned of all his crimes. But no matter how much she knew that to be the truth, it somehow didn't seem to reconcile with her memories. It was like a loose tooth she couldn't help but play with, feeling it wiggle and move and yet never fit right. Why had he done it? Judy suddenly became aware of the edge of the breastplate digging into her palm as she squeezed it tight. That was it. The reason he had kissed her and the reason he had left the breastplate behind had to be one and the same.

He was mocking her.

He was telling her that he was still alive as way of taunting her, letting her know that the game was still afoot. Judy dropped the breastplate and stood up as it hit the rocks with an almost musical clang. If that was the message he wanted to send, she had received it. Judy imagined, for a moment, how he would react when she finally found him. Would he beg for mercy? She was duty-bound to give it, after all; she had her orders to bring him back alive if possible. But perhaps, once his back was to the wall both literally and metaphorically, he'd lash out at her. Maybe she'd have no choice but to kill him. It felt like that thought should have been more comforting than it was, but there was something gnawing uneasily at the pit of her stomach. Judy tried pushing the thought aside and kept walking, but somehow she wasn't able to get rid of the nagging sense that something was wrong.

Judy wasn't sure how long she had walked before she came across another sign of the fox. It might have been minutes, or perhaps hours, before another red-orange strand of fur caught the light of her torch, seeming almost to glow with its own light. She didn't stop for it, though, and started moving a little faster. The beach was still narrow, but it had widened slightly so that there was a somewhat rockier part closer to the wall of the crevasse where the water hadn't been able to wear the stones smooth. She stuck to the slimy stones, though, not wanting to cut her feet on the sharper stones, and as she continued Judy realized it was widening even further, to the point that there was no doubt that there was some kind of actual path running alongside the wall. And there, in dust that must have been otherwise undisturbed for centuries, were a very distinct set of footprints that could have only come from a fox.

Judy paused only long enough to examine them. They were surprisingly far apart, which must have meant that he was running flat out. It almost certainly meant that the fox had been under the influence of a cheetah quauhxicalli, and the thought brought a grim smile to Judy's lips. That was, at least, one quauhxicalli he wouldn't be able to use against her.

The tracks were easy to follow, quite distinct in the thick dust caking the floor, and Judy brought herself to a jog, setting herself to a pace she knew she could keep up for hours if she had to. The fox tracks continued on, and she followed them for the better part of an hour. The tracks started getting closer together, which could only mean that the quauhxicalli had worn off, and he had lost his ability to move so fast. He had a significant lead over her—it had taken a not insignificant amount of time for Judy to first gather her supplies and then be lowered into the crevasse—but Judy thought that she had to be reducing it.

She was so intent on following the tracks that she nearly didn't look down a narrow gap in the wall, as the tracks continued on past it, but Judy did and was immediately glad she had. Through the narrow rocky archway the ground wasn't quite as dusty, but there, half-erased, was a dusty paw print. Judy swung her torch from the side path where the tracks continued going forward; the fox couldn't have possibly gone both directions. And then she realized what he must have done.

It was, she had to admit, rather clever. Perhaps it would have fooled someone else, but she _knew_ him in a way that others didn't. The tracks stretching forward before her looked perfectly regular, and that was the problem. They really were perfectly regular, as was the dust near the archway. It was _too_ perfect, too orderly, and it could have only meant he had used his alchemy to try to set a false path. Judy didn't even have to think about her decision before setting off through the archway, which led into a tunnel so narrow that if she had reached out she could have touched either wall.

It didn't have the look of one of the tunnels purposefully made by the mammals who had once inhabited the ruins, nor did it look like it had been dug out by a treasure seeker. The walls were rough, with none of the inlaid tile that the mammals of old had seemed to favor, and it had neither the perfect smoothness of alchemy nor the sharp marks of tools. The tunnel stretched off in the distance, continuing on for so long that Judy couldn't see the end of it; whatever was before her was in pitch-black darkness that her little torch didn't penetrate.

She steeled herself for the worst, and then set off down the tunnel, reaching out with all of her senses for anything out of the ordinary. But there wasn't anything; all she could see was the yawning black void ahead of her and the rough gray stone around her. The sound and smell of the water began to fade as she continued onward, until the only sound was her own footsteps and her heart in her ears.

"Hey Carrots," a dreadfully familiar voice suddenly called from behind Judy's back.

Judy spun around, raising her sword as she did. She prepared to lunge at her enemy, and then suddenly stopped in confusion. The fox was standing there, as she had known he would be. But in the light of her alchemical torch, she could see _through_ him, his body ghostly and insubstantial, blurred at the edges like something seen through fogged glass. A half-smile touched his face as he spread his paws, palms up. "We need to talk," he said.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Judy here exhibits signs of what could be considered a body dysmorphic disorder, hating her alchemically healed arm and even wishing to cut it off. Her reaction is, perhaps, somewhat on the more extreme side, but it's actually a problem sometimes seen with prosthetic limbs. There are many people who receive prosthetic limbs but later reject them and stop using them, for a variety of reasons, including that the prosthetic never feels like it becomes a part of them.

The reappearance of head Nick here is something of a reference, but it'd unfortunately be quite a spoiler for me to describe. However, if it seems similar to something, well, there's a reason for it. I will say that head Nick's character is quite a bit different from that one, but it'd also be a spoiler to get into that now!

Otherwise, I don't have too much to say for this chapter. As chapter 51, this is now officially my longest story by total number of chapters, even if it hasn't yet surpassed "...And All That Jazz" for the total number of words. As to the total length of this story, well, the end is near. I won't give away just how close it is, but it is coming up relatively soon, and with that a new story will also be starting soon.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought!


	52. Chapter 52

Despite how long his fall had been, the only thing Nick had broken was his heart.

It was a ridiculously sappy thing to think, the sort of idea he would have scoffed at not too long ago. Heartbreak was something for the fools who opened themselves up too much, who gave someone else too much control over them. Nick had realized, following his first disastrous attempt at a relationship, that to love someone was to give them a terrible power over you. And so he had stayed alone after that, and it had seemed to work well for him. He had managed to drift through life, slowly erasing his debt to Big. With the shrew imprisoned and his daughter safely taking a new identity, the latter thanks to his hard work, Nick should have been freer than he had ever been. But he wasn't.

Because of Judy.

Because of her, jumping into oblivion with nothing more than the hopes of guzzling down enough quauhxicallis to survive the fall went from something he never could have done to something he had to do. Because of her, he couldn't simply run away and wait for the whole mess to be over. Whoever was at the top of the heap running the kingdom didn't really matter to the mammals at the bottom, after all, and Nick had no illusions about where he fit into the hierarchy of things. But because he had fallen for a rabbit, he had no choice.

Somehow, though, as he pulled himself out of the fetid water at the bottom of the crevasse and dragged himself onto the narrow shore, it didn't seem too bad. The task before him still seemed monumentally impossible, of course, but knowing he _had_ to do it made it better. That it was the sort of thing that Judy would appreciate, the sort of thing she would have tried herself if she had been in his position.

Nick fumbled with the clasps of the breastplate he wore and let it fall, not caring what happened to it. He didn't know how Judy managed to walk around with something so constricting and heavy on at almost all times, but he had no intention of doing so any longer than necessary. As it hit the rocky ground with an almost musical clanging noise, however, he immediately regretted his decision; there had been a bat quauhxicalli among the ones he had stolen and it was sickening to have a sound impossibly twist into an image in his mind.

Frankly, he didn't know how the mammals of the City Guard managed to use quauhxicallis long enough to actually do anything without collapsing to their knees. Just staying upright as all the various effects slowly wore off was enough of a challenge that it almost managed to push his other thoughts aside. But he did manage to walk, staggering along the slim and rocky beach as he considered his next move.

Or at least, that's what he tried to do, since his thought irrevocably kept returning to Judy. What was she doing as he stumbled around in the dark? Was Cerdo punishing her for failing to catch him? He could only imagine what she might be suffering at the pig's hooves. Cerdo had demonstrated a truly terrifying amount of control over her, and there was no telling what he was capable of.

Or if it could be undone.

It was the thought that Nick was most desperate to avoid, so it was of course the one that kept returning to the front of his mind. Was Cerdo capable of erasing whatever it was that made Judy herself? Perhaps he could. Perhaps he could turn her into a mindlessly slavish follower who would happily follow his every order. Turn her into someone who would never even consider the possibility that they could be wrong about something, let alone admit it. Or maybe Cerdo would go even further than that. Maybe he could erase all her memories, too, so there'd be nothing to tempt her back toward becoming the bunny she had been. Maybe the next time Nick saw Judy, her face would be a blank mask, without so much as an iota of recognition as she tried to put a sword in his gut. And then, even if the gods smiled on him and he figured out a way to stop Cerdo, maybe she would never recover.

Of course, that assumed that he ever saw her again. It seemed far more likely that he'd simply die alone in the labyrinth of tunnels under Phoenix, and Nick shook his head. Maybe Judy really had rubbed off on him a bit; he was groping for cheery possibilities in sheer defiance of both the situation and his own tendency toward pessimism. There was one thing that he knew for certain, though: unless he did _something_ he really would die alone.

And so Nick continued trudging along the beach, taking inventory of what he knew and what he had. There wasn't much in either category, but he went over both over and over again just to be sure he wasn't missing anything. He knew that Cerdo was, apparently, behind the assassination attempts on the princess and was responsible for whatever had happened in Phoenix. He knew that the pig had mastered some form of mind control using torcs, and Lady Cencerro, Lord Bogo, and Judy were all under his thrall. Whatever Cerdo's next step was, he needed the City Guard to advance into Phoenix.

Beyond that, anything Nick considered was simply conjecture, and so he focused on what else he had. The clothes on his back, including a City Guard tunic that had soaked up water like a sponge and was heavily pulling down on him as it dripped. A single, and rather finely made, sabre. A cheap alchemical torch. One of the letters Bogo had given Judy, which he had managed to snag while stealing Judy's quauhxicallis. And, last but certainly not least, the torc that had been meant for him as part of his forced induction into the City Guard and that would have presumably given Cerdo power over him if he had worn it.

It wasn't much, but it was more than nothing. Nick could cheat and count himself among his assets, and so he decided to do so. If the gods frowned on immodesty they would have smote him years ago anyway, but if his latest set of circumstances was the punishment for his misdeeds then at least they had a sense of humor. Who would have thought that a fox would join the City Guard?

Despite himself, Nick smiled, shaking his head. If nothing else, he was probably setting a record for the shortest career in the City Guard. That he'd end up a member of the organization he had skirted his entire adult life, and would be trying to save the entire kingdom while they hunted him down seemed like it could be a pretty funny joke if he wasn't at the center of it. Perhaps he was being overly self-important by assuming that the City Guard would try hunting him down; maybe Cerdo would be content to assume that either the fall or the monsters at the bottom of the crevasse would take care of him.

And while he was wishing for things, maybe Judy would descend down the pit in a beam of light and tell him that the gods had seen fit to take care of Cerdo and restore her control over her own body. But since that seemed sadly unlikely, Nick kept walking as he thought things through. There were really two potential dangers to him at the moment; a monster or some other artifact of the mammals who had once called the ruins home, or a search party sent by the City Guard.

When he finally came to a side tunnel that led off the beach, Nick began leading a false trail. It was simple, really; he took one step into the passage and then stepped back out, smudging his footprint as he did so to make it look like he had carelessly missed erasing one track. And then he began drawing a simple alchemical array on the ground, which he continued drawing as he kept walking. Once he had gone a good two hundred feet or so, or about the point where he thought even a particularly bright light wouldn't reach, he closed the array and then walked to the middle.

While there, he drew a somewhat more complicated array on the wall of the crevasse, and then after arranging a couple hastily made focuses pushed his talent into both arrays simultaneously. It was the sort of trick that licensed alchemists usually saw as needlessly flashy, the sort of thing an alchemist did to show off. Nick, however, took the far more practical view (as he saw it) that he was saving himself time and effort, and thus he created an overly perfect line of footprints in the dirt at the same time he made a shallow hole in the wall.

Nick considered his work and allowed himself a single satisfied nod. The too-even footprints made the way he had actually gone look like a fake trail, and once he closed the little nook he had made it would be all but impossible to see so long as he was careful. A decent tracker would try following him down the first false lead he had made, and a bad one would follow his footprints until they ended, then turn around until they thought to try the first turn off. That was ignoring the possibility that a good tracker would realize what he had done immediately, but unless they were an alchemist Nick liked his odds of being untouchable once he sealed himself off in a little pocket in the wall.

With that accomplished, and after making a small ventilation hole, Nick set his alchemical torch on the floor and pulled out the letter out, carefully unsealing it. As the neat script on the outside indicated, it was intended for the queen's eyes, and it wasn't nearly as long as Nick had hoped. Still, he read it over and over to make sure he wasn't missing anything, and on the third time through he felt as though he'd be able to recite the words.

 _Your Majesty,_

 _I am writing you this letter to explain my actions, should an explanation be necessary. Over the past few months, I have noticed that my ability to concentrate seems to have been diminished, but I deny the possibility that I may be of unsound mind. I am, I assure you, no less capable of critical thought than I have ever been. However, I have noticed a disturbing pattern that I believe required swift and immediate action. My moments of lost focus occur most frequently when I am around Lord Cerdo, particularly in instances where he is alone with me. Although it may sound implausible, I believe that it is possible he has developed some way of influencing my thoughts, and that Lady Cencerro is another victim of his. My evidence of this is, admittedly, slim, but I do distinctly recall him on one occasion commanding me to forget something, and I believe there have been many other such instances. If I am correct, this would therefore be why the investigation into the attempts on the princess's life have made little progress, as Cerdo is able to manipulate what I pay attention to and learn precisely what I am looking at._

 _My intent, therefore, is to use Commandant Totchli and Captain Nicholas as backup for a confrontation with Cerdo. I believe I can force him into a position in which he will have no means of escape but exerting his control over me, which will be obvious to Totchli and Nicholas and allow them to take action to stop him, even if doing so should require killing me. As neither has been a member of either the City Guard nor involved in affairs in the Inner Baronies, I believe them to be safely outside Cerdo's influence, which must have limits. If he could control anyone, surely he would have no need to attempt his plan. Therefore, I wish it known that if I was correct, and the commandant and captain were not able to non-fatally stop me, they were acting upon my orders and should face no punishment._

 _If I am entirely wrong, allow me to tender my resignation as being unfit for duty._

 _Your faithful servant,_

 _Lord Samuel Bogo, Captain General of the City Guard_

Nick frowned thoughtfully as he folded up the letter and set it aside. The writing almost didn't sound like Lord Bogo; the buffalo seemed like an entirely different mammal when he wrote than when he spoke. He also hadn't known that the dour captain general actually had more than one name, but Nick set that thought aside as he had the letter. From what he had seen in his own encounter with Cerdo, Bogo hadn't been a raving lunatic as he had apparently feared he might be. But what he had described was almost encouraging, in a way. Bogo had apparently suffered some kind of side effect of being under Cerdo's control, which manifested as a loss of focus. Presumably from Cerdo forcing Bogo to forget things, which might eliminate conversations but couldn't get rid of the time they had taken. Moreover, the technique must not be perfect, as Bogo had clearly noticed that something was wrong and had some kind of memory of what had really happened. The buffalo hadn't seen fit to describe that in much detail, but it was a start.

Still, things would have been much easier for everyone if Bogo had decided to just run Cerdo through with a sword.

That was the sort of thing that Judy would probably find abhorrent and send her into a lecture about the importance of doing investigative work the right way, and Nick allowed himself a small smile. Imagining how Judy would react was almost like having her at his side again, and if he couldn't quite summon what would have surely been her righteous indignation at the idea of slaying a mammal whose guilt was unknown he could at least appreciate that she had been true to her ideals. Unlike some members of the City Guard, who would cheerfully bend the rules as they saw fit to punish a fox whose guilt was unknown but assumed, Judy's devotion to fairness had been unshakable.

 _Was_ unshakable.

Nick corrected his thought; trying not to let the pessimistic view of things overtake him. Bogo hadn't seemingly lost himself entirely, and so Nick decided he had to hope that the same was true for Judy. He'd much prefer if he never had to admit to anyone that he was taking such a foolishly optimistic view, but as a personal thought it helped.

Bogo apparently hadn't known that torcs were Cerdo's means of control, or he never would have attempted his gambit, and Nick wondered how much of that had been controlled by Cerdo himself. Had the pig set things up, or had he simply been improvising? If there was one thing Nick had learned over the course of his life, it was the importance of appearing in control even when you weren't. At his core, Cerdo was running a confidence trick, and Nick knew what he needed to do to put an end to it.

He needed to understand it.

Admittedly, that was simplifying things quite a bit; a plan consisting of "understand your enemy" and "use that knowledge to defeat your enemy" was a bit short on helpful details. Such as, for instance, exactly _how_ he'd stop Cerdo. But Nick moved on to the next stage of understanding Cerdo's plan by pulling the torc that had been meant for him out of his pocket.

As the maker of the finest forged torcs (and that, Nick was confident, was simply a fact and not ego), Nick had to admire the care that had been taken by whoever had made the torc he held in his paws. There was absolutely nothing, at first glance, that would give anyone a reason to suspect it was anything more or less than what it appeared to be. It was a slim and heavy band of gold, the interior covered with a complicated but very familiar alchemy array around a unique serial number. A tiny needle that could fold out of the interior surface would draw the drop of blood necessary to bind the torc to its wearer through blood magic the first time it was put on, and a small incomplete philosopher's stone powered the whole thing.

No matter how carefully Nick examined it, turning the torc this way and that in the light, he didn't see any of the obvious signs of a forged torc that lesser imitations showed. The entire alchemy array seemed completely functional, with none of the dim or bright spots crudely made copies showed. The heft of the thing felt right, and like a proper torc there wasn't a seam, the entire thing looking like it was made out of a single solid piece of metal.

But real torcs, Nick knew, _weren't_ solid. They were made out of several layers, and the outer case was simply fused together with alchemy to prevent tampering. But he knew exactly where the metal would have been joined together on a real torc, and he drew another alchemy array and set the torc inside it. Using his alchemy to understand how an object was made was one of those things that he'd probably never be able to successfully describe to someone who wasn't an alchemist. Or even someone who _was_ an alchemist, as Nick had yet to meet a licensed alchemist he got on with well enough to actually have a conversation. But there was that same familiar sense of understanding in a way that went beyond simply seeing it or feeling it. It wasn't even like that bat quauhxicalli that made sound bend into a sort of sight. It was simply _knowing_ how the torc went together, to be able to imagine it with any of his senses without ever directly interacting with it using any of them.

The interior of the torc, once he understood it, was quite a bit more complicated than a standard torc. A normal torc had two internal layers, all covered with complex alchemical arrays, and then the outer layer with yet another array running along the inner surface. Cerdo's torc had five layers, each as thin as wafers, and the incomplete philosopher's stone at its heart was easily four times the size of the one in a regular torc.

Despite that, though, the exterior case was completely identical to a normal torc in terms of how it went together, and it was the work of a few seconds for Nick to alchemically create seams and split it open. When he did, and the foil-thin interior layers came out, he completely ignored them because of what else was there. If he had thought the gods had a cruel sense of humor before, what spilled out into his paw seemed to prove it even more definitively.

The marble-sized lump at the heart of Cerdo's torc wasn't an incomplete philosopher's stone, as he had thought it was. What Nick held in the palm of one paw and looked down at with open disbelief was what he had spent most of his life trying to learn how to make, what he had scoured countless books for information on and what had gotten him involved in a less-than-legal relationship with Big.

It was a complete philosopher's stone.

It was beautiful, emitting a vibrantly red light that almost seemed to pulse like it had a heartbeat, and Nick could feel the raw power contained within the tiny stone coursing through his fingers. "Well," Nick said to himself, a smile as sly as it had ever been spreading slowly across his face, "This gives me a few more options."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Well, this kind of breaks up the typical alternating pattern of Judy and Bogo chapters, doesn't it? I thought a Nick chapter fit in well at this point; it provides some useful information neither Bogo nor Judy would have, and I thought it was interesting to get into his head at this moment.

This chapter is chapter 52, which actually means a couple things. The first is that, with me sticking to one chapter a week, this story has been going on for an entire year. That's a very long time, and especially for you who have been reading since the beginning, you have my sincere thanks for sticking with it for so long. I do sincerely appreciate your engagement, and I hope you'll continue to be engaged until the story ends!

The other thing that this means, simply by a quirk of timing, is that this chapter update marks my three year anniversary of posting at least one new chapter a week. Overall, from when I started in September of 2016, I've published a total of 168 chapters across 6 different stories. In that time, I've encountered a lot of wonderful people in the Zootopia fandom, and I can honestly say that I'm amazed that so many people have read and enjoyed my work. I really cannot thank you, the reader, enough! I fully intend to keep writing, and I have a lot in progress that I can't speak about too much at this point. However, my intent in publishing fan fiction online is and has always been to get better as a writer, and I think some of my upcoming projects will be exciting examples of me continuing to strive for that kind of improvement.

In any case, I can't wait to show some of those things off and see what people think of them. In the meantime, though, as always you have my thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to comment, I'd love to know what you thought.


	53. Chapter 53

Judy's hesitation at seeing the apparition before her lasted only a moment, her shock at seeing the translucent fox before her freezing her in place. And then with a wild yell she lunged. She put all of her might, all of her fury, behind her thrust, her hatred for the _thing_ before her seething like a bright poison in her veins. She was absolutely sure that her blow would be a mortal one, that whatever trick he was pulling would fail with the strength of her blow.

And then the tip of her sabre passed through the ghostly fox's stomach with absolutely no resistance.

Judy could see the entire length of her sword through whatever it was that stood in front of her, the end protruding cleanly from its back. It was as though she had tried stabbing a morning fog, for all the good it had done, and she swept her sword from side to side. The apparition looked down at the sword that should have been ending its life, then up to Judy, and then back down to the sword. It looked up at her again, its eyebrows quirked in a hatefully bemused expression as it opened its mouth to say something, but Judy didn't let it speak.

With another piercing yell, she drew her sword back and then stabbed at its head.

Once more, absolutely nothing happened. The thing went cross-eyed as it looked at the blade that should have been embedded in its forehead, and then looked back down at Judy. She drew back her arm again, and the thing spoke. "Look, that's obviously not working," it said, "Why don't you—"

Judy cut it off with another lunge, and a vaguely annoyed expression crossed its face. And then, with a suddenness that made it seem instantaneous, the thing became solid. Judy could no longer see through it, but when she stabbed at it again a sharp blade of pain seemed to spike into her forehead. For an instant she could see two irreconcilable versions of events—the blade of her sword in the air with nothing around it and the blade buried in the fox's guts—and she staggered backwards, her sabre falling out of a suddenly numb paw.

"I was _going_ to stay all ghostly for your benefit," the now solid thing said, "But if you're going to be unreasonable and keep trying to stab me rather than talk, I'll let you break your little bunny brains each time you try."

Judy panted, the pain slowly draining out of her head, as she looked up at the thing, which seemed completely indistinguishable from the fox she hated more than anything. But, she realized, it wasn't. It was whatever the fox had left inside her as he had mutilated her with his alchemy, and a sense of horror sharper even than the pain of trying to stab the solid apparition flooded through her. Her vision hadn't simply been the result of being tired and hungry. It had some kind of reality to it, and she couldn't get rid of it. The idea of having to spend the rest of her life with the fox's mocking voice in her ears as he appeared to her and only her was a terror beyond anything she could have imagined.

"You haven't tried stabbing me again for a few seconds," the fox observed cheerfully, "That's a good sign. Now, are you going to stop trying or do I need to stay solid?"

Judy regarded the thing through narrowed eyes for a long moment, considering his words carefully. It was an interesting thing it had said; maybe she was reading too much into it, but perhaps appearing solid cost him more effort than appearing translucent. She filed it away mentally and slowly said, "I won't try stabbing you again."

The thing nodded brightly. "I'm glad to hear it. I saved your life, you know."

"You did no such thing!" Judy snapped, the words out of her mouth before she could stop them.

She regretted them instantly; she was trying to learn all she could from the apparition, but her hatred of what it resembled seemed to be all-encompassing. "I did," it said, almost serenely, "The other Nick—the one you think of as the _real_ Nick—wasn't the one who shouted that warning when that assassin was about to throw a knife into your back. You're welcome, by the way."

Judy couldn't do more than gape at the thing as she struggled to put her memories in order. She had the strangest sense of things not quite aligning; she could certainly remember being in the princess's carriage, fighting to save her from the would-be assassin with the fox at her side, but it was as though there were too different emotional colors to the scene. Had she really been worried about what would happen to him after he had been pinned to the wall?

Judy frowned. It didn't make any sense; she had hated the fox from the moment she had met him. Why would she care about his continued survival? Unbidden, though, other memories seemed to float to her consciousness. The fox being pulled away from her side by monsters, far away from any kind of help. Diego Cencerro arresting him, unmoved by words. And a crazed, dreamlike image of a young fox being bullied by apprentice alchemists for the crime of wanting to learn. A lump seemed to form in her throat, and Judy couldn't say why. Why did she _care_ so much? Unless... "You're manipulating my mind, aren't you?" she asked the apparition harshly, "What have you done to me?"

She had tried to be firmly in control as she asked the questions, as full of authority as Bogo himself. But she couldn't help it. Her voice had cracked as she asked the last question, and she could feel helpless tears streaming down her face. Something was dreadfully wrong with her, she knew. Something was eating away at the very fiber of what she was. Two different versions of events seemed to fill her head, the bright and glowing hatred of the fox—of Nicholas—warring with something else. Something...

What, exactly?

It was like trying to remember a dream after waking up, the details trickling through her fingers as they dissolved into nothingness. There had been _something_ , she was sure of it now. Something that the hated fox must have planted in her mind the way he had filled her insides with copies of his own organs and replaced her arm with a copy of his own.

 _He did it to_ save _me_ —

 _He did it to_ hurt _me_ —

Judy shook her head, trying desperately to clear it. She felt sick in a way she never had before, sick in the mind rather than the body. "I can't," the thing's voice interrupted Judy's thoughts, and there was something like concern in the words, "I can't do much of anything but watch, to be honest."

It hunkered down next to her—Judy realized she had fallen over without knowing it at some point—and looked her in the eyes. As she watched, it faded into translucence again like a fire dying, the bright sparkle going out of its brilliantly green eyes until she could see the dull gray of the wall behind it. "But you're not doing well, are you?"

It was all Judy could do to shake her head. Admitting her weakness in front of the thing should have been humiliating. Demeaning. You weren't supposed to let your enemy see where you weren't strong. But there was something else there, something inside her chest that seemed to match whatever was in the apparition's eyes.

"I'm a bit surprised you went for me," the ghostly fox said, a slight smile bringing up the corners of his muzzle, "Didn't Cerdo want you to take Nick alive?"

The wave of agony that roiled through Judy's head made the previous pain of seeing two irreconcilable versions of striking out with her sword seem like a gentle nudge. Her eyes rolled up into her head and she clutched at her ears, feeling as though her skull was suddenly too small to contain her mind. That was true; the thing was right. Cerdo _had_ ordered her to try taking the fox alive and only killing him if she couldn't. But she had struck out with her sword what should have been a killing blow.

She had disobeyed.

The agony grew as she keeled over, and the feeling of the rocky ground against her back was totally eclipsed by what was going on in her head; it was like her mind was burning. She couldn't see anything but brilliant starbursts in front of her eyes, and her blood roared through her ears. That constant, throbbing thought blotted everything else out. She had disobeyed. She had disobeyed. She had disobeyed. She had—"I'm not Nick!" a voice called, seeming to come from very far away, like she was at the top of a well and it was coming from the bottom, "I'm not Nick. I'm not. You didn't disobey Cerdo."

How long had the apparition been saying that? Maybe it had only been the first time. Maybe he had been repeating the words for minutes. Hours, perhaps. The passage of time seemed to have lost all meaning, and Judy weakly pushed against the ground until she was sitting upright again.

And then, for the first time in her life, Judy vomited.

It was as unpleasant as it had always seemed, her guts clenching as though in the grip of some terrible vice. Once it started she couldn't stop it, the muscles in her neck straining as she sprayed the ground in front of her with the remains of her last meal. The smell of it was terrible, and Judy's chest heaved again with that awful involuntary pressure she could do nothing to control, and her vision blacked out for an instant with the force of it.

When the attack had passed and she had managed to unsteadily rise to her feet, feeling as drained as an empty canteen, the apparition was still standing there. "I'd offer a handkerchief," it said, "But..."

It didn't need to finish the thought. Judy knew that the thing couldn't give her anything. It could watch her—even see things she couldn't, if it was telling the truth about warning her about the blade the sheep had thrown—but that was about it. Well, other than incapacitating her by appearing impossibly solid and yet letting her see the truth of reality, that it wasn't there. It was only in her head.

Judy felt a sudden surprising pity for the thing. "You're not Nick?" she asked, her voice unsteady and weak.

The wave of sickness had passed, but her strength had yet to return. "I'm not," the apparition said.

That made it just as much a victim of the fox as she was. How cruel it was, to create something with every appearance of being alive, and yet had no reality of its own. It was as bound to her as she was to it, and she couldn't help but feel a twinge of sympathy. "What are you, then?" she asked.

It was half concern, half interest in finding something she could use against the thing's creator, and she paid close attention to its face. "How about this," the thing said, "I'll tell you everything I know if you answer a question for me. Just one."

It held up a single finger as it spoke, its tone completely earnest. "Just one?" Judy repeated.

"Just one," the apparition said, nodding, "Promise me you'll answer it and I'll tell you what I know."

Judy mulled over the offer for a long moment. If it had been the hated fox before her, she would have refused flat out; there would be no telling what sinister motive he might have. But for the ghostly fox...

"I promise," Judy said, and the thing clapped its paws together in apparent pleasure.

"Wonderful," it said, "Now, the first thing you have to understand is that I'm not your— I'm not Nick."

It corrected itself so smoothly Judy barely caught it. "I'm sort of..." it continued, trailing off.

It spun one paw in a vague circle, apparently trying to come up with the word. "I'm sort of his will," it said at last, "He's shown you how alchemy works, hasn't he?"

There was that odd duality of memory again as Judy remembered the fox at work, the _correct_ version of events seeming to war with a different one she couldn't quite grasp. "Yes," she said at last.

The ghost—or whatever it was—smiled. "Alchemy is all about changing things through your own force of will," it said, "And when you were dying, and he was improvising, he used more willpower than he ever had in his life. More willpower than any trained alchemist would use, I think. But everything he knows he learned out of books. It makes him strong in some ways and weak in others. Like creating me by accident, for instance."

It gestured at itself as though it was inviting Judy to take in the view. The thing didn't continue speaking, and Judy prompted it. "That's it?" she said.

The apparition shrugged. "I don't know anything he doesn't," it said, "Or didn't, at least. I have no idea what he's up to now."

Judy frowned. From what little she knew about alchemy, it sounded like a reasonable explanation; she should have guessed that the fox's lack of training would cause him to make mistakes. "Now," the thing said, "I believe you have a question to answer for me."

Judy nodded to show that she was listening.

"You hate Nick," it said, and it wasn't a question.

To Judy's ears, the thing was stating a simple fact, and from the tightness that developed in her stomach as she thought of the hatefully smug fox she knew it was absolutely true. The ghostly fox spread its paws wide. "Why?"

"I..." Judy began, more than a little surprised by the question, "I've always hated him."

"That's not a reason," the thing said, "Why?"

"He mutilated me!" Judy protested, pulling the sleeve covering her horribly deformed paw up a few inches to show the fox fur that covered the skin of it.

"You would have died if he didn't do that," the thing said, cocking its head to the side, "Would you have preferred to die?"

A sharp, spiteful answer was immediately on Judy's lips— _Of course!_ —but she didn't say it. Couldn't say it. Because it wasn't true. If she had died, there would have been so many things she would have regretted. Never having the opportunity to report in to the City Guard on what she had seen in Phoenix. Never knowing if that information would have made a difference. Never telling Nick that she—

Judy's head snapped up; another quick burst of pain had run through it, blotting out her thought before it could reach its conclusion. "He didn't have to do this to me," Judy said, gesturing at her arm again before rolling her sleeve back over it.

"I know him better than anyone," the thing said, "He didn't know what else to do."

Judy rummaged through her thoughts, which seemed strangely out of order again. It was an absolute fact that she hated Nicholas. She was sure of it. Positive of it. She knew it with every ounce of who she was. And yet...

No reason she could say aloud came to mind. She simply hated him. Or, was that quite true? Had there been some reason for it after all? Some kind of...

Order.

"I've been ordered to find him," Judy said, "And bring him back. That's all that matters."

The apparition nodded, making a noise that could have meant anything. "If you say so," it said, "But it's a little odd, then."

"What's odd?" Judy asked.

"Why you're still carrying that little golden trinket he gave you."

Judy had no idea what the thing was talking about, and then suddenly she did. Her paw darted to a pocket of her uniform and pulled something small and cold from it. There, in her palm, was a tiny golden carrot, exquisitely detailed and with a loop made out of a cunning twist of its leafy top. She stared at the object, watching light reflect off its smooth golden surface, and thought back to when it had been given to her. It had been...

 _Nice_ , she thought, at the same instant another word ran through her mind.

 _Mocking._

Yes, that had been it. He had given it to her to mock her. That was all there had been to it. And she had carried it around as a token. Not one of friendship, of course. Definitely not, although that foolish thought seemed to be lurking beneath the surface of her mind. She had kept it as a token to remind her to never trust him. That made sense, didn't it? It seemed plausible. But no, plausible implied that it might not be true. It _was_ what had happened, she was sure of it.

"It's just a reminder," Judy said, and roughly stuffed the little trinket back into her pocket.

It was a reminder she could still use. "But why'd you want to know why I hate that traitor?" she asked.

The apparition regarded her carefully. "Well, there's something important you ought to understand," it said, "If anything happens to you, that's it for me."

"Oh," Judy said, although she didn't understand what kind of point it was getting at.

"So it's in my best interest for you to succeed," the thing said, and then grinned suddenly, "That sounds just like him, doesn't it?"

"It kind of does," Judy agreed, and she couldn't help but smile.

The thing that had appeared to her looked exactly like her hated enemy, but she didn't hate it. How could she?

"But the real question is, the one I was getting at, is if you have it in you to stand up to whatever tricks he throws at you. Forgive my saying so, Carrots, but running at him with a sword probably isn't going to work."

Even the use of that loathsome nickname the fox had given her took on a different tone coming out of the apparition's mouth. Friendly. Kindly, like he actually cared about her. "I'll do whatever it takes," she said.

"To capture him?" the apparition asked mildly.

Still, there was a rather shrewd look on its face as it regarded her. "To capture him," Judy agreed, vividly recalling the wave of pain she had suffered at the mere thought that she might have disobeyed her orders.

"Then I want to make you an offer," the thing said, "It works out best for both of us if you capture him alive. But he's a crafty one, isn't he? Very cunning."

The ghostly fox's words had taken on an almost conspiratorial tone, and Judy nodded. The fox _was_ a difficult opponent. She had barely beaten him when they had sparred what felt like ages ago. And she wouldn't put it past him to have lost on purpose, trying to get her to let her guard down.

"I can help you," the thing said, solemnly looking Judy in the eyes, "I know him better than you do, after all."

Judy regarded the thing seriously, considering the offer. "Alright," she said at last, extending one paw, "Let's catch him together."

The apparition smiled, extending its own ghostly paw. It couldn't actually touch her, of course—its insubstantial paw drifted right through her own—but they pantomimed shaking. They really weren't so different, after all, and she could certainly use a friend. The thought startled her for a moment, but Judy dismissed it. Why shouldn't she be friends with the apparition? It was, after all, everything that Nicholas was not.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

In chapter 41, Head Nick brushed the real Nick's tail, and the difference between what actually happened and what Judy saw happened nearly incapacitated her due to seeing both at once. Here, Head Nick deliberately triggered that by making himself seem solid so Judy would have the conflicting vision of her sword passing through the air and of it just going through him. Following that instance, he demonstrates that appearing translucent is a bit less brain breaking for Judy than appearing solid.

The instance of Nick warning Judy about a throwing knife appeared in chapter 47; some readers guessed there that it was really Head Nick doing so and not the real one. Here, at least, Head Nick claims this to be the case.

Real rabbits are indeed incapable of vomiting, which is one of the things that makes individual rabbits such delicate animals. Most of Judy's guts were, however, replaced with copies of Nick's internal organs, and foxes can vomit. I know when I'm sick, throwing up is one of the most unpleasant parts of it, so I'm not sure I can adequately imagine just how bad it would be for an adult with absolutely no frame of reference for how that's supposed to feel.

The real Nick and Judy did indeed spar all the way back in chapter 9. That wasn't quite eons ago; in the story it was only a matter of days, but in the real world there have been 308 days between when that chapter went up and when this one did.

Speaking of a long time ago in real time, Nick made the golden carrot in chapter 5, and Judy's been carrying it ever since.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought.


	54. Chapter 54

About three months before he had made captain, Bogo nearly died in a raid on a counterfeiting operation. He could remember every moment of that raid perfectly; it had been the work of months tracking down the ring of criminals who moved from one building to another, making use of the talents of nearly a dozen alchemists who had failed to complete their apprenticeships. Their final hiding spot hadn't been something that seemed suitably dramatic in retrospect; it hadn't been an abandoned warehouse or a forgotten mineshaft. It had, in fact, been a perfectly pleasant-looking building being rented out by a moderately successful merchant who did her best to keep her properties attractive. The flowers that had been planted out front seemed burned into Bogo's mind, and not just the smell of them. The color of them in the light of the moon, the way they had swayed in the breeze, even the way they had brushed against his trousers. All those little details were impossibly vivid, as though the memories had a shape to them, a _realness_ to them, that his life before or after lacked.

He could remember how his stomach had clenched as he stared at the incongruously cheerful facade of the building, marshaling his soldiers to prepare to breech the door and be ready for anything. The idea of fighting a dozen alchemists, even a dozen half-trained ones who lacked the skill to master the magic, had been at the time about the most frightening thing he could imagine. Normal criminals could, and sometimes did, kill members of the City Guard. They would almost always die themselves—their torcs saw to that—but...

Bogo frowned, looking down at his desk. His thoughts were drifting again, as it seemed they almost inevitably did, but he had little else to do as he waited. He had ordered a first wave of his troops into Phoenix to scout the settlement, and until a report came back he was alone with his thoughts. Perhaps it was simply his unease at the unknown, or perhaps it was the recent and shocking betrayal of the former Captain Nicholas, but something in his current thoughts was eating at him. It was like a grain of sand had gotten stuck in the delicate skin around one of his hooves, or a piece of food between his teeth. Something about his thought was like a sliver in his mind, refusing to go away. _Their torcs saw to that..._

The phrase seemed oddly important, but he couldn't say how or why, and his thoughts drifted on.

...but alchemists were more dangerous. An alchemist could make a mammal suffer terribly before dying; Bogo had seen it for himself before that raid. He had investigated a case of an apprentice (one in good standing at that; not one already shown the door or on his way out) who had, in an argument over a doe, transmuted the air in his rival's lungs into something horribly corrosive. That it had been after several drinks, and that the apprentice had surely never meant to actually kill another buck, hadn't changed the reality of one unfortunate mammal's demise.

Bogo's plan in the raid on the counterfeiters had been to strike hard and fast, not giving them the opportunity to react before they had been neutralized. And to bring two of the City Guard's rare and precious alchemists with. Just in case.

His own alchemists hadn't ended up needing to do anything during the arrests. Despite the tight knot of anxiety in his gut, despite his fear that he had said goodbye to Maria for the last time, despite even the knowledge that he had been lucky before and that luck surely couldn't hold out forever, despite all of that and more...

Nothing had happened.

The counterfeiters had been quite eager to surrender, putting up absolutely no fight whatsoever as they were bound and hustled out of the building. Some of them hadn't even waited to be carried out before they started trying to give up information, shrilly screaming the details of the counterfeiting ring for the whole kingdom to hear without so much as a semblance of dignity.

They had left behind what would have been an absolute fortune if any of the coins had been real. How they had gleamed! Stacks and stacks of gold coins, glittering in the harsh light of alchemical torches. The counterfeit symbols engraved in them gleaming dully with their own inner light, so even the coins too deep in the shadows for Bogo's torch to reach glowed. The very air of the room had been suffused with that incredible golden light as wondrous as anything Bogo would ever see years later when he started serving in the castle. The feel of standing there, alone in that cramped room except for one of his fellow lieutenants, had stuck with him just as much as the flowers that had been outside. Every detail of it was sharp and crisp, from how his uniform tunic had chafed at his neck to how the stone walls of the room carried the faint but sharp scent of whatever had been used to clean them. Bogo could picture it all as though he was still there, as though he had never actually left.

And then...

What had happened next had always refused to fall into any sort of order. Reconstructing it afterwards had only made it all the more surprising that he had somehow survived, knowing that it had quite literally been a matter of inches. Bogo felt his frown deepen and he shook his head, trying to clear it as he stood up from his desk in his carriage. He didn't think about that raid often. He didn't like thinking about it. But something about it seemed to inexorably pull at his mind as he waited for news to come back from his scouts. He began pacing his carriage, despite the lack of room to do so, having to turn so frequently he would have been better off staying seated. But there was something restless in him that refused to be quieted, and it was a welcome distraction when there was a sudden knock on his door.

Although he had hoped for a report back from the scouts in Phoenix, and even another assassination attempt would have been something of a respite, it was only the princess. She looked surprisingly small and miserable, although Bogo was sure the multiple attempts on her life couldn't have helped her mood. He felt a touch of shame at himself for half-hoping something terrible would happen to distract him from his own gnawing concerns and welcomed her into his carriage.

"Is it true?" she asked, the words very nearly the first ones out of her mouth.

Bogo didn't have to ask about what, of course. "It appears so," he said, "The fox was involved in Cencerro's plan after all."

The look of distress that crossed the princess's face was almost painfully childish, a reminder that for all she had been forced to grow up quickly she was no adult. "It just doesn't make sense," she said, "Nicholas could have killed me. He had the perfect opportunity to kill me _and_ Commandant Totchli and make it look like he wasn't involved."

A response died on Bogo's lips as that nagging thought crossed his mind again. _Their torcs saw to that..._

He resisted the urge to shake his head. It was a nonsense thought, completely irrelevant to the situation. Nicholas's torc wouldn't function outside the boundaries of the Middle Baronies. No torcs did. He had warned the queen of the danger it posed, since any assassin could strike with impunity, knowing that their own death wasn't guaranteed. Torcs simply didn't work without the alchemical array surrounding the part of the kingdom that virtually all of the population lived in.

 _Their torcs saw to that..._

The thought came again, with that same nagging insistence, but it continued to make no sense. The princess was right that Nicholas had held the perfect opportunity to strike. He could have helped the sheep assassin carry out his job and make it look as though he would be overwhelmed. Why wait only a matter of minutes longer to expose his involvement?

That, at least, Bogo remembered, but compared to his other memories of all of the worst moments of his career it was oddly dull and flat. There was none of the sharpness of his memory of events just prior to that raid on the counterfeiters, nor even the jumbled mess of images like the immediate aftermath. When the booby trap, set not by any of the counterfeiters but by the criminal who had organized them, went off it had turned the piles of fake coins into a deadly hail of metal. Coins had been everywhere, denting his breastplate, embedding themselves painfully in his arms and legs, one nearly passing through his eye where it surely would have killed him.

Bogo tried pushing that nightmarish memory aside, but it felt as though it had trapped him in the stuttering replay of what he had lived through. He had fallen on his back, at some point, but he didn't remember that. Just the glowing white blossom—like a flower, like the flowers in front of that building—that had seemed to suddenly spring into existence in the center of the room, pulling up and flinging coins. There had been a terrific sound, like a crash of thunder centered in his head, and then his ears had simply stopped working for an instant before there was nothing but a high-pitched ringing in them.

The other lieutenant had been dead before he hit the floor, punched full of holes by counterfeit coins, and the smell of his blood sizzling in the heat of the explosion had been what brought Bogo back to a hazy imitation of consciousness before a wide-eyed ensign pulled his head up, her words completely inaudible over the ringing in his ears. Then he had been outside, somehow, with no memory of how that had happened. Had he walked? Been carried? He had never learned the answer to that question. Time seemed to keep jumping after that moment, but it always went back to that explosion. It was like his memories were a book that had been torn apart and reassembled without any care for the original order. He knew that he must have been taken elsewhere for medical care, but it _felt_ as though the explosion had happened after that, as though it was a piece of punctuation.

Compared to that, what was the fox's betrayal? Certainly nothing particularly impressive. "It may not seem to make sense," Bogo said slowly, painfully aware of how long had lapsed between when the princess had last spoken and when he had responded, "But I saw for myself that the fox was a traitor."

The evidence had been undeniable even if it hadn't been spectacular. The fox had drawn his sword, declared his allegiance to Cencerro, and tried stabbing Bogo. Commandant Totchli had intercepted and deflected the blow, but Nicholas had used the closeness of her approach to steal her quauhxicallis and flee. It was all quite simple, really, and Bogo described it to the princess in his typically blunt fashion.

She didn't seem comforted by it, but then again Bogo supposed it was far from comforting. Knowing that one of the mammals who had sworn an oath to protect you would violate that oath had to be frightening, especially if the princess had started getting close to him. "That makes even less sense!" the princess protested, and Bogo felt genuine confusion overcoming him.

Confusion and something else, something he couldn't identify. "He's an _alchemist!_ " she continued, her words coming rapidly, "Why would he try stabbing you?"

"He—" Bogo began, and then immediately paused.

It was odd. Or perhaps odd wasn't the right word for it. An alchemist had access to incredible power, even if that wasn't power that they could instantly draw on. The time spent transmuting something could be enough to get past their defenses, but that really only applied when they weren't taking someone by surprise. Nicholas could have easily hidden what he was doing until it was too late for Bogo to do anything but die, and his torc wouldn't have done anything.

 _Their torcs saw to that..._

The thought popped into Bogo's head again, defying all efforts at focus, and he cursed his drifting mind. It was bad enough that he was dwelling on being caught flat-footed by a booby trap in some long-ago raid; that by itself was the last thing he wanted to think about when the lives of his scouts were on the line. But the single maddening thought that ran through his head was even worse; it didn't seem to come from anywhere or belong anywhere.

"Perhaps he didn't wish to harm Commandant Totchli," Bogo said at last, but that didn't fit either.

The rabbit hated the fox. She loathed him with every fiber of her being, in fact. Why would he care about someone who cared so little for him? It was a foolish thing to say, the words seeing to have simply come out of his mouth unbidden, but to his great surprise the princess nodded slowly.

"Maybe," she said thoughtfully, as though Bogo's suggestion had been entirely reasonable, "Maybe that's why."

Perhaps the princess was simply indulging in a bit of romantic nonsense, imagining that the fox and rabbit shared some sort of sordid affair, but she was silent for a long moment. "Has there been any word from Phoenix?" she asked, mercifully changing subject.

"Not yet," Bogo replied, and she seemed to catch a wealth of meaning from those lone two words.

"Thank you, Lord Bogo," she said, nodding, "Do you mind if I wait here for news from the scouts?"

"As your majesty wishes," he said, and they both fell silent.

He couldn't guess at what thoughts consumed her, but his own mind fell back into familiar territory as he was tormented by the memory of that raid.

Bogo resisted the urge to slam a fist onto his desk; it wouldn't have done anything other than hurt his fingers and perhaps splinter the wood and it was a bad example to set for the princess. Why was he remembering it now, of all times? Why couldn't he banish his stray thoughts anymore? Bogo had never been an especially pious mammal—in his view, the gods mostly left mortals alone, only occasionally poking and prodding at them when they wanted something—but he couldn't help but feel as though _someone_ was trying to give him a message. It'd be arrogant to consider himself divinely blessed, but...

 _Their torcs saw to that..._

It didn't mean anything. Couldn't mean anything. And yet Bogo felt as though there was a spark of realization that dangled just out of his grasp, that there was something that he was simply failing to recognize. He stopped trying to push his memory of the raid away and instead tried scouring it, trying to find why he kept thinking of it. He wasn't sure how much time passed, but he kept coming up empty over and over until at last there was another knock on his door, interrupting his futile efforts and seeming to make the princess jump a little.

This time it actually was a scout reporting back, a slim cheetah with her back proudly straight. She stood before his desk, her feet a shoulder's width apart, and made her report. "The settlement seemed abandoned, Captain General," she said crisply, "No sign of mammals above ground."

" _Above_ ground?" the princess asked, emphasizing the very word Bogo had also caught as important.

The cheetah nodded. "Yes, your majesty. There are survivors—"

Before she could finish the thought, Bogo knew exactly what she would say. _Hiding in the ruins under the city._

"—hiding in the ruins under the city," the lieutenant finished, just as Bogo knew she would.

An odd feeling gripped his gut, and he became aware that both her eyes and the princess's eyes were upon him. It was foolish to read too much into his ability to know how the sentence would end; if there wasn't anyone above ground but there were survivors, it only stood to reason that they'd be below ground. But his certainty had been absolute; he felt as though he had already known it before she had told him. It didn't _feel_ as though he had simply guessed. "How many?" Bogo asked, feeling strangely numb.

"A few dozen, at most," the cheetah reported.

No, that wasn't right. The entire population of Phoenix had survived. Bogo had felt very sure of that for some reason, but he couldn't guess why, and at the scout's words realized it must simply have been wishful thinking. He looked at the cheetah—tall and slim in her scout's uniform, a City Guard torc glittering at her neck—and saw she was waiting for him to say something else. "What did they say happen?" the princess asked, mercifully sparing Bogo from having to come out of his thoughts.

"They were attacked," the cheetah reported simply, "Most of them seem too shocked to say much else, other than to ask if we're sure that they're safe now."

The knowledge of what Bogo needed to do next seemed to fill him all at once. "We're taking the main part of our forces in," Bogo said, the words seeming almost alien in his mouth.

He knew it was the right decision at the same time he knew it wasn't, but that was surely just his self-doubt cropping up. For the sake of the citizens of Phoenix, he had to do what was right; who knew when the attacking force would show up again? Maybe that was what his memory had been trying to show him. He had walked into a booby trap before, it was true. He had nearly lost his life to it, as a matter of fact. But that had been a pile of fake coins and nothing more. When it had exploded, the loss of each coin was completely insignificant. But if someone had set a trap with the survivors of Phoenix as bait, it was his duty to walk into that trap. If he didn't try to save innocents, he really would be unworthy of his rank.

Still, he became aware of the princess looking at him, and he quickly added, "With a sufficient force remaining to ensure the safety of the royal family, of course."

The princess nodded, but there was an almost faraway look in her eyes as she did so. "I'll return to my mother," she said, "And inform her. Thank you, Lord Bogo. I think I know what I need to do now."

The chimera turned to leave, and as she did, Bogo caught a glimpse of a sheath under her cloak. He had barely even noticed the clothes she had been wearing as she walked in, but the sight of that sword hidden from view filled him with an odd sort of melancholy. It only made sense for the princess to carry a weapon after so many attempts on her life, and especially after the betrayal of a guard who had personally helped defend her. But it was still a terrible thing to see.

The princess made her goodbyes, and Bogo was left alone with the scout. There had been something almost curious about the princess's choice of words, and with her deciding to leave before hearing everything the cheetah had to say, but Bogo let it slide. He had to get ready to walk into Cencerro's trap, after all.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

I don't really have too much to add for this chapter. Chapter 5 established that coins in this setting do have glowing alchemical symbols engraved on their sides as an anti-counterfeiting measure, but this chapter shows that it isn't a perfect proof against counterfeiting. The significance of Bogo's thoughts, and what keeps occurring to him over and over again, should hopefully be apparent, and I did enjoy the opportunity for another glimpse into his long career. Beyond that, due to having a Nick chapter this was the first Bogo chapter in a while; things are continuing to move above ground even while they do so below.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought.


	55. Chapter 55

The ghostly figure of a fox was an odd companion, but Judy found she didn't mind his company as she continued her progress through the seemingly endless tunnels under Phoenix. Part of it was that he was another set of eyes, and as she searched for any sign of the traitor he did the same. But the other part, the part that almost felt more important, was that she was glad not to be alone.

It occurred to her, as she carefully looked over the cracked and broken tiles lining the tunnel walls, that she had never really been alone before. As a kit, other bunnies had always been around, and when she left the family holdings to join the City Guard the barracks had been only somewhat less crowded. All of her classes and training had always been with other cadets, and it was only once she had graduated that she had truly been alone. For only a matter of days before she had been assigned to escort the hated fox, it was true, but it had been the longest stretch of time she had ever gone completely separated from the wider web of connections that made up the kingdom.

 _But you don't have to be alone to be lonely._

The words popped into her head in the voice that her current companion and the loathsome Nicholas shared, but the ghostly other Nick hadn't opened his mouth. Was she remembering something that Nicholas had said? He had been rather fond of talking, after all, and it seemed like the sort of thing he might have said to play on her sympathies. She _had_ been lonely, and she _had_ felt isolated, and—

Judy shook her head to clear it, and as she did the other Nick looked over at her. "Something wrong?" he asked mildly.

"I just can't let the traitor get in my head," she said, and he nodded slowly.

"Ah," he said, "I see."

For an instant she thought that he might have something else to say, but he didn't speak again, leaving her to her own search. And her own thoughts.

After coming to her agreement with the phantasmal fox, she had carefully considered his advice for how best to proceed. In his opinion, it was likely that Nicholas would try setting a trap for her. He had a head start on her, after all, so it stood to reason that he'd eventually hole up somewhere and prepare himself for her. It really left two major possibilities for how to proceed. Either she had to move fast enough to catch him before he could finish whatever he planned, or she had to go slowly enough to spot a potential trap before blundering into it.

Judy had considered his words for what had felt like an eternity, her mind racing and seeming to end up in knots. Going fast appealed to her sense of duty and justice; every minute that the fox spent free was a mockery of the kingdom. Then again, was that what he was expecting her to do? If he knew that she could be impatient and would hurry, would she be playing into his scheme? It made going slow sound appealing, but then she'd be giving him more time to set up a trap.

In the end, she had decided that they had to go slowly and carefully. Some part of her rebelled against the idea, but it seemed the best approach even if she hated it.

 _The sure sign of a compromise is that no one's happy._

The words sprang to mind in the same voice, and Judy looked up sharply. "Did you say something?" she asked.

"Not in a while," her companion said, and then he sighed.

"Although I wouldn't mind a little conversation. This is awfully dull, isn't it?" he said, stretching his arms out and yawning widely, "I'm getting tired."

Judy simply looked at him for a moment and blinked. "You get tired?" she asked.

"Why wouldn't I?" he asked, his tone seeming to betray that he found it an odd question.

"Well... You..." Judy began, groping for the right words.

It struck her as bizarre that the fox—who by his own admission and her own attempts at stabbing him had no body of his own—would have to stretch or could wear out, but she didn't know how to phrase it. It seemed a little silly, but she didn't want to offend him; he was the closest thing to a friend she had. "Oh, the whole incorporeal thing?" he asked, thankfully saving her from having to come up with something.

He grinned, and stuck a paw through his chest, waggling the fingers. His ghostly translucence didn't change, and Judy could see both his paw and his body quite clearly. Unlike when he was apparently solid, his passing through something didn't make her head hurt; it was like seeing one piece of frosted glass move behind another one. "I guess you're right that I shouldn't," he said cheerfully, "But it feels like I do. I just hope I don't get hungry."

It occurred to Judy that it'd be a terrible torture to go through, to feel hungry and thirsty but never able to eat or drink. "So I don't know," the other Nick continued, seemingly oblivious to the frown crossing her face, "Maybe it's because _you're_ getting tired."

Judy was about to protest that she wasn't even a little tired, but she realized it'd be a blatant lie. Searching the tunnels wasn't too difficult—she had a very bright alchemical torch and an eager companion—but it was mentally draining. Every time she blinked it was like the pattern of tiles had been burned into eyes; she could still see it. Rather than stifle her own yawn, Judy gave in, which brought an appreciative chuckle from the fox in her head. "We're in this together, you know," he said, his tone sympathetic, "If you die, so do I."

"We can take a short break," Judy said, letting herself fall into a sitting position, "Just a few minutes, though."

"Just a few minutes," her companion promised, and he eased himself down until he was apparently sitting on a rock.

"If it helps, he's probably getting tired too," he offered after stretching himself widely, "He might make the first mistake."

"He won't make a mistake."

The words were out of Judy's mouth before she could really think about them. But it wasn't admiration, of course; it was simply being unwilling to underestimate her opponent. The fox seemed to _want_ to be underestimated; it was practically written in every aspect of his being. The plain and unadorned torc at his neck, for instance, which he had worn until receiving the golden one of an officer. He had swapped it out for one of his own making, a replica that didn't actually work.

 _A replica that didn't actually work._

The words seemed to stick in Judy's mind; there almost seemed to be some higher meaning behind them. But as much as she thought it over, she couldn't imagine what it could be. Maybe as a metaphor for the fox himself; he was not what he appeared to be. He was cruel where he pretended to be kind. Inexperienced where he feigned mastery over alchemy. Conniving where he pretended to be friendly. He was—"Getting lost in your head over there?" the other Nick said, the words snapping her attention back to him.

Judy almost jumped, startled by how quickly her focus had wandered, and she offered him a somewhat abashed smile. "I guess so," she said, and he nodded absently.

"You have a lot to think about," he said, "Do you mind if I ask a question? Besides that one, I mean."

"Sure," she said, a bit curious as to what he'd ask.

"When did you first figure out what Nick—the real Nick—was like?"

On its surface, it was a simple question, but Judy didn't seem to be able to come up with an answer for a moment. She had hated him from the moment she met him, after all. He was smug and cocky and seemed to have an endless love of needling her. But...

Her loathing of him was bright and hot, burning with a fiery passion unlike anything else she had ever known. Judy had never before hated someone as much as she hated him. But he had been far from the first mammal to act unkindly toward her; she could think up countless examples of mammals who had thought less of her for being a bunny, who had told her that she would fail and never make it through the City Guard's academy.

But she hadn't hated any of them.

She had done her best to prove them wrong, of course, and there had been a fierce satisfaction in graduating that made every hardship she had faced and overcome worth it. But with Nicholas...

"When I first met him, I guess," Judy replied at last, "I saw right through him."

The words should have been right. Should have _felt_ right, as though she was telling her companion that fire was hot or water was wet. But they seemed oddly hollow, and before that awkward feeling in the pit of her stomach could grow, she asked the ghostly fox a question of her own. "What's it like?" she asked, "Being like you."

He smiled widely, his fangs bright in the light of her torch even if they didn't reflect any light. "Why, it's kind of you to ask," he said, "No one ever has, you know."

"No one else has ever met you," Judy countered, but her tone was light.

In contrast to her own words at her opinion of Nicholas, bantering with the other Nick felt right in a way Judy couldn't quite describe. He was charming, in his own odd way, and rather attentive. He nodded and rolled one paw with a mock formality. "That's true, yes," he acknowledged, "But you didn't have to care, you know."

"Why wouldn't I?" she asked.

With the very notable exception of Nicholas, she had always done her best to genuinely care about other mammals. It was why she had joined the City Guard in the first place, after all. Not to serve her own selfish desires—as she was sure Nicholas had by becoming an alchemist, no matter what story he had spun for her—but to actually help the kingdom and make it better.

"Not everyone would," he replied simply, and Judy nodded; Nicholas wouldn't have, she was sure.

"But as for what it's like..." he began, before trailing off.

He raised a paw—in front of his face rather than through his chest again—and looked at it. "It's... different. I have his memories, so I know what it _should_ be like. I should be able to feel things. I should have a heart beating in my chest. And I don't."

His words were almost solemn, and not for the first time Judy felt a wave of empathy for him. He hadn't asked to be created, after all, and it was only through the carelessness of Nicholas that he did. What would it be like, she wondered, to never be able to touch anyone? To never hold a paw, to never kiss, to only have a single other person in all the world who could even hear you. "I'm sorry," Judy said, "I shouldn't have asked."

He waved a paw airily. "There's no point in letting it bother me," he said, "It's not like I can change it."

"You shouldn't have to accept things the way they are," Judy said.

It was something she firmly believed, and he seemed to consider the words for a moment. "I suppose not," he said thoughtfully.

"Besides, you're stuck with me for the rest of my life, right?" Judy asked, trying to give her words a sort of half-sympathetic, half-teasing spin, "I want to get along."

He smiled a little at that, but only a little. "Maybe," he said, "But just because I'll die if you do doesn't mean that I'll live as long as you do. If you go into another anti-alchemy circle, it might get rid of me. Or I might just fade away over time. I really have no idea."

It was a surprising vulnerability he had revealed to her, and Judy felt a lump in her throat. She was sure she could trust him, but he had just volunteered a possible weakness with no apparent second thought. She had no more of an idea than he did if something that nullified alchemy—like a Nopalayotl or the prison in Phoenix—would actually succeed in killing him, and at the thought she spoke. "No, not get rid of you," Judy said, "If those things happen, they'd kill you."

"If you want to think of it like—" he began, but Judy cut him off.

"I do," she said firmly, "You're alive. And anything that stops that would kill you."

He stayed silent, and Judy stood up and walked over to him, wrapping her arms around him. It was, perhaps, a pointless gesture—her arms passed right through him, without so much as the slightest indication that he was there—but he had seemed to need a hug. But as she carefully positioned herself and looked down, the illusion seemed almost perfect.

* * *

They had set off again shortly after that, and Judy had felt more willing to talk as they searched. It helped keep her alert while engaged in their endlessly monotonous task, particularly when neither one of them spotted any sign of Nicholas. There hadn't been any sign of him since she had chosen the side tunnel leading away from his paw prints, and she turned to her companion. "Do you think he tricked us?"

"That he didn't really go this way?" the ghostly fox asked.

He tapped a claw against his mouth, frowning as he considered it. "It'd make sense if he did. He could have set up a fake trail, and then made his real trail look fake."

Judy blew out an exasperated sigh. The idea of having to backtrack wasn't particularly appealing, although it would be easy; the tunnel had been running continuously in a straight line without so much as a single deviation. "Or he did go this way and we're turning our backs to him," Judy said.

It was the problem with chasing a mammal, particularly a dangerous one. In the gloomy tunnels under Phoenix, there was no guarantee that they'd stay behind him. For all she knew, the tunnel might branch off in a dozen directions just beyond the limits of what her alchemical torch let her see. Or it could continue straight until it hit the foundation of the Outer Wall itself. There was no way of knowing; her companion was no more familiar with the tunnel than she was. "I suppose it's a matter of what you think he's trying to do," the other Nick mused, and Judy nodded.

That was important. Maybe he was just running away to save his own skin, in which case he'd simply be trying to get far enough away to give everyone the slip and make it back to the Middle Baronies. There, he might be able to blend in, making a fake torc and with it a new identity. Something about the torc seemed important, but it was just beyond Judy's grasp and after a moment's consideration she let the idea go. It probably wasn't important anyway.

But what Nicholas was trying to accomplish was. "He's not done with me," Judy said, feeling quite certain of her answer.

She couldn't say why, but something told her that Nicholas wanted something more from her and wouldn't give up until he had it. "Let's try going back and seeing if we can pick up another trail," she said, and the other Nick nodded.

It was quicker going on the way back, although Judy still did her best to look for signs they might have overlooked when they were going the other direction. She still saw nothing, which only fed into her certainty that she had been fooled. Irritation seemed to pool in her belly; it was galling that the traitor had tricked her. And, perhaps, himself, since her companion hadn't seen it coming either. Still, she couldn't blame him too much for that; the real Nick was a much worse mammal. The other Nick should be happy to actually have the positive traits the real one only faked.

Everything looked exactly the same as it had, until something new caught the light of her torch. It was lying on the floor of the tunnel in a red puddle, and it took Judy a moment to recognize it for what it was. It was vaguely cylindrical, wrapped in red fabric and from the center of one ragged end something gleaming white and jagged protruded.

It was an arm.

The puddle it was in was unmistakably blood, and as Judy got closer, moving cautiously, she could see the splayed out fingers, each dark brown and with a pad. The wrist was brown too, but where the other end—a bit short of where the elbow should have been—ended, Judy could see coppery fur where it wasn't covered in blood or the remains of a City Guard tunic sleeve.

It was Nicholas's arm.

Judy looked at it numbly, wondering if she was too late to capture him. Something icy but paradoxically hot seemed to run up her spine. She realized she didn't want to believe it, and she looked around desperately. As she played her alchemical torch along the corridor, though, she saw the signs of what could have only been an awful struggle. Blood was not just pooling around the arm; it was splattered along the walls and ceiling. Bloody paw prints led away from where she was standing, wobbling and uneven, and a spot along one of the walls looked to have been melted into glass. At the center of the scorch marks were charred bones that looked as though they could have come from an Ehecatl. The bones weren't alone, either. There were the blackened remains of at least half-a-dozen other monsters scattered throughout the hall, all of them showing the signs of being incinerated by unimaginable heat.

Judy turned and looked at her companion; ghostly though he was he looked somehow even more insubstantial than usual. "It might— It might be a trick," Judy said over a tightness that had suddenly come into her throat, "It has to be."

Her voice sounded weak and uncertain to her own ears. Could he have really made such a scene with alchemy? The horrible smell of burning meat hung in the air alongside the coppery scent of blood, and there was no doubt in her mind that the arm on the floor was _real._ It had clearly been torn off a mammal, yellowy tendons jutting out from ruined muscles. It was too ghastly to be fake, too perfect in every detail. The way specks of dirt clung to the wet and raw parts turned Judy's stomach as what must have happened rushed into her mind. Nicholas had been overcome by monsters, and despite doing his best had ended up having one arm torn off. He might have killed all the beasts attacking him, but from how the paw prints leading away from the arm wove back and forth she felt that he probably wouldn't survive much longer if more monsters came.

The other Nick squatted to take a closer look at the severed arm, a queasy look on his face. "He's not a strong enough alchemist to do all of this," he said, shaking his head and gesturing to take in the carnage.

Judy remembered how he had collapsed after what he had done to her arm; if her companion said it was beyond Nicholas's abilities she believed him. Still, that only made it even more important to be careful; she could remember exactly how dangerous the Ehecatls had been. "I'll watch our backs," the other Nick said, turning around to face the way they had come; even though Judy was the only one who could hear him had had spoken in a low whisper.

Considering the circumstances, she couldn't blame him. Judy could feel her fur starting to stand on end; she wasn't frightened, exactly, but her heart had started racing faster and for some reason her eyes had started to water. She wiped at them uneasily, not wanting to go a moment longer than necessary without being able to see properly. The sound of her footsteps sounded impossibly loud to her ears, and her alchemical torch, which had been so bright not too long before, seemed suddenly weak and feeble. The light it threw off didn't seem to reach far enough, leaving a yawning void of darkness ahead.

Judy strained for any sort of sign of what was before her, but there was nothing. There was no slither of the scales of an Ehecatl against stone or the terrible rustle of their wings. She plunged onward slowly, willing her every sense to be as sharp as possible, and then suddenly she heard something. A high, keening scream came from further down the tunnel, echoing as it did, and there were words interspersed with the screams. "Help! Someone, please!"

The voice, like the arm, was Nicholas's.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

The Nopalayotl was mentioned first in chapter 29, as a giant turtle-like monster with an anti-alchemy array on its shell. Ehetcatls, the horrible feather-covered snake-like monsters, first showed up in chapter 31.

Otherwise, I don't really have anything to add. As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought.


	56. Chapter 56

Bogo stood at the head of his army, which only seemed right, and looked at the bridge to Phoenix. The original bridge had been destroyed by Diego Cencerro, but the replacement his alchemists had put together looked solid enough. It looked, in fact, hardly any different from the old bridge; were it not for the fact that it was ever so slightly darker in color than the remains on either end of the chasm and showed no signs of age there would have been no difference at all.

Bogo turned back and looked at his forces, at the hundreds of determined faces he could see even as he knew there were hundreds more he could not. He couldn't help but feel some pride at the sight of so many mammals ready to do their duty even as something colder bit at his gut. Even after the princess had left him, the nagging sense of missing something remained. He had done his absolute best to prepare for what he was about to commit to, of course. He had questioned Alba Cencerro himself, but she had refused to say anything she hadn't already, her eyes seeming glassy and dull as though she had withdrawn to some secret internal place.

The only thing that she had said, when he had pressed for further details, was almost ominously vague. "I don't know all the details," she had said, her voice as dull and tired-seeming as her eyes, "They didn't matter."

There were, of course, options that Bogo could have taken to try wringing more answers out of the sheep. But Bogo didn't seem to have a stomach for them; some part of him insisted that it'd be a terrible mistake to make. He had left Alba Cencerro alone in her hastily-made prison after asking one final question on what seemed like a whim. "What do you know about torcs?" he had asked, the words seeming to leave his mouth of their own volition.

Bogo had been more than a little surprised at himself; he didn't tend to blurt things out. Not anymore, at least; it had been decades since he had been far more hot-tempered and brash. But there had still been that same thought going through his head.

 _Their torcs saw to that..._

He wasn't sure what had made him ask Cencerro, and he hadn't really expected a meaningful answer. Cencerro had looked at him, though, her eyes momentarily seeming to brighten. Bogo had looked at her carefully as she seemed to be on the verge of saying something, her lips half-parted. At last, just as he had given up that she would say anything at all, Cencerro had spoken a single word.

"Control."

With that, she had seemed to lapse back into that apathetic silence so unlike the sheep he had known. Or at least, the sheep he _thought_ he had known. It wasn't an answer that meant anything; anyone with half a brain would know that the purpose of torcs wasn't merely to keep the population of Zootopia safe but to control them in a way. And was that really such a bad thing, after all? It was preventing mammals from killing and harming each other, not...

 _Their torcs saw to that..._

As Bogo stood there, aware of the eyes of his soldiers upon him as they waited for the command that would have them march into Phoenix and whatever awaited them there. His heart was pounding in his chest, and he felt as though he was on the cusp of grasping something important. Something seemed to be dancing just outside his reach, something that he was sure would end his constant wandering thoughts. But that itself was a foolish thought, surely; what it all came down to had to be nothing more than old age starting to catch up with him.

Bogo did his best to shove the thoughts aside and turned to his expectant commanders. "The word is given," he said simply, "If anything looks suspicious, report back before investigating it."

He had never been one for lengthy speeches. But even with so plain a command, something so unlike the grand and glorious speeches captain generals of old were said to have given to rally their troops, his army seemed to move as though it was itself a living creature. The newly remade bridge didn't seem to flex so much as an inch under the syncopated steps of nearly two thousand mammals, and nothing on the other end popped up to face them.

Bogo felt his stomach twist into an uneasy knot as the first wave of the army reached the half-way point of the bridge; he had naturally ordered sentries into position ahead of the main force crossing who had thoroughly checked for anything that might damage the bridge. Having hundreds of his soldiers plunge deep into the chasm beneath Phoenix, where they would surely die as the traitorous fox must have, would be an ignominious start to the expedition. But nothing happened, and the army continued to advance until it had reached the other side.

Something deep within Bogo seemed to scream out that he was making a grave mistake, but it couldn't give a reason to accompany this irrational fear. Rather, it was simply more of that same nagging concern that didn't seem like it'd ever leave him, and the words flashed through his mind again.

 _Their torcs saw to that..._

He pushed the thought aside again as his army, free of the choke point that was the bridge, split into three massive arms, as though it was a trident being thrust into the heart of Phoenix. His sense of unease refused to depart, though, and with it the surety that something terrible was about to happen only grew. He knew that it was an irrational thought—that it _had_ to be an irrational thought—because he had taken every possible precaution. Scouts had scoured the city ahead of him giving the order for the main force to advance. The civilians found under the city had been evacuated, and there had been no sign of an opposing army lurking in wait.

Bogo told himself that it had to be the simple fact that he still didn't know what Diego Cencerro had planned or how he had done it. Where had his army come from, and how had it melted away without so much as a trace? Even as his command center took shape around him, just inside the boundaries of Phoenix, he saw none of the usual clues of assault he had expected. There were no broken windows from an invading army gleefully looting. There were no bodies of defenders crumpled where they had fallen, nor even so much as bloodstains on the streets or sides of buildings. There were no arrows embedded in the ground or walls where they had missed their mark and not been recovered; there was only the eerie sense that the city had been abandoned.

As his command tent went up, Bogo turned around and looked back the way he had come. He had foreseen the eventuality of a surprise attack coming from behind, and taken what he had thought to be adequate precautions. A significant part of his forces—nearly three hundred mammals, although the group had just as many alchemists with them as his advance force did—had formed a half-circle around the other end of the bridge. If an attack came, he controlled both sides of the bridge and would be able to respond accordingly.

Although Bogo's close-up vision had admittedly grown worse over the years, to the point that he needed reading glasses for anything that wasn't written in large letters, there was nothing wrong with his ability to see things far away. And there was, in turn, nothing wrong with what he could see from where he stood. The half-circle of soldiers stood at alert around the carriages that the expedition had brought with; although he was too far away to quite distinguish them he knew that the queen and the princess were safely ensconced in one of those carriages and Alba Cencerro was secured in another.

There was, in short, absolutely nothing to worry about.

But the feeling in his heart just wouldn't go away. Not even as reports began to trickle in as Phoenix was searched in more thorough detail than lone scouts could have done, all of them amounting to the same. There was no sign of the enemy. There were no more survivors, either survivors or corpses. There was nothing but the sense that everyone had simply left.

It gnawed at Bogo; it absolutely felt like a trap to his gut at the same time that it didn't. There simply didn't seem to be any reason to set up such an elaborate trap and not spring it in any of the dozens of ways that he could think of. If anything, it seemed almost like the setup for a spectacularly unfunny practical joke.

And then, with absolutely no warning, something changed.

Bogo had planned the entrance into Phoenix so that the sun would be high in the sky, banishing any shadows in which the enemy could hide. But the quality of that light somehow seemed to change, and it took him a moment to realize how. It wasn't that the sun had gotten dimmer or brighter; it was that there was a new source of light, pouring up from the crevasse surrounding Phoenix. Bogo looked at the light coming up from the point closest to himself, and heedless of the danger ran over to the edge and looked down.

It hurt his eyes to look into something so bright, but it looked as though a brilliant pattern had suddenly appeared in the rock about fifty feet below the surface along the opposite edge of the crevasse wall. Enormous lines curved smoothly around for as far as he could see, and tremendous symbols bigger than he was danced in and out of the lines, forming words that he couldn't read.

"Call a retreat!" he bellowed, although he didn't have to.

The sudden light had been accompanied by no sound; Phoenix was as quiet as it had ever been. "We need to—"

 _You need to obey me._

Bogo clutched at his head as the thought seemed to explode into it. The voice was loud and terrible, as cruel as anything he could possibly imagine. It seemed to brook no argument, blotting out every other thought. As Bogo collapsed to the ground, he was vaguely aware of everyone else he could see doing the same.

 _Lord Cerdo's commands are absolute._

The voice came again, and with it was not just the overwhelming force of the thought but something else. Bogo could feel tears filling his eyes at the pressure. He _wanted_ to obey Cerdo. It was only right, after all. He had to. It would be so much easier if he just gave in to that relentless force filling his head. Dimly, he was aware of a different voice inside his head, something small and feeble trying to say that it was wrong. But how could it be? It felt _right_ in a way that nothing ever had before.

 _Obey._

The force of the command was not lessened by its simplicity. It struck Bogo's mind like a hammer, and that feeble voice fell silent. Of course he had to obey. It was an authority that superseded all others.

 _Obey._

The pressure was irresistible. Bogo heard a voice cry out, begging for orders from Cerdo that they might be followed, and realized after an instant that it was his own.

 _Now rise and follow._

And with that, the force inside Bogo's head was gone. Only that wasn't quite right, was it? The voice had fallen silent, but the pressure still seemed to be there. He was eagerly awaiting an order to follow, and everything else was meaningless. The thought that had been running through his head was pointless after all, just something unimportant that had gotten stuck there.

Bogo arose unsteadily, watching as the mammals around him did the same. He could somehow _feel_ their shared sense of purpose, and when he saw a small group of scouts sprinting across the bridge from the other side a calm sense of purpose filled him. He knew exactly what he needed to do; Lord Cerdo had given him orders right before he had crossed the bridge himself. He simply hadn't remembered them until now because he hadn't needed to.

"What happened, sir?" one of the scouts cried as they approached Bogo's tent.

Their paws, he couldn't help but note, were on their weapons. "A failed attack by the enemy," Bogo said, his words perfectly calm.

He knew exactly what he needed to say, the words flowing smoothly from his lips. "Some kind of gas made with alchemy. Their array must have failed this time."

Cerdo had given him the explanation he would need, and Bogo watched impassively as the scouts looked from one to the other. "Gas?" one said uncertainly.

"The array's gone," Bogo said, pointing at the crevasse, and of course it was, just as Cerdo had said it would disappear from sight after fulfilling its purpose, "It must have been their plan all along, to get our army here and kill us all."

The other guard gave a relieved chuckle. "I can't say how glad I am that it failed, sir," she said, and Bogo nodded.

"It might have failed now, but I don't know enough about alchemy to say that it won't turn on again," he said, "We need to evacuate."

The feeling of all the pieces coming together was incredibly pleasing, and Bogo watched with satisfaction as his army pulled away from Phoenix, reforming into a single line and marching back across the bridge. His army would wait for further commands, but there was one more thing he had to do himself. He reached into an inner pocket of his tunic and felt for the two objects Cerdo had given him, confirming that they were still there. They had completely slipped his mind before, but that was fine. He had remembered them when he needed to use them.

Bogo called out four of his captains and they accompanied him as he made his way to the queen's carriage. Cerdo himself seemed to appear out of nowhere, joining them as they walked to the door. "Very well done indeed, Captain General," the pig said, his tone one of utmost pleasure.

Bogo let the warmth of the words flow over him. "Thank you, Lord Cerdo," he said.

The guards before the queen's carriage nodded at his little group as he relieved them and they all entered the queen's carriage. Bogo reached into his tunic and grasped one of the two torcs that waited there and—"My daughter!" the queen cried.

Bogo's hoof fell away from the torc he was to put around the queen's neck as he looked at her. Queen Isabel's eyes were wide with panic, and she was completely alone in the carriage. "Where has the princess gone?"


	57. Chapter 57

Choosing to run away was the hardest thing Isabel had ever done. It wasn't because sneaking out of her carriage was easy—it was certainly proving to be harder than she thought it would be—but because it went against what felt like every fiber of her being. A princess who abandoned her subjects hardly seemed worth the crown, in her mind, although it wasn't anything anyone had quite taught her.

Her mother had always stressed that being a ruler was a responsibility much more than it was a right, it was true, and Isabel had a vague memory of her father telling her something similar when she had been quite young. But what had really stuck the idea in her head had been the history she had learned, of all those royals going back to Oveja I.

Among those seemingly countless kings and queens, there had been every sort of ruler, no matter how the books and her tutors tried to flatter them. There had been wise kings and foolish ones, cruel queens and kindly ones. There had been royals who had taken the throne so late in life they had spent far more time as a prince or princess than as a king or queen, and those who had ascended to the throne so early in life they had been younger than Isabel herself was. And in the stories of her long-dead ancestors, Isabel had tried figuring out for herself the answer to a very simple question.

Were they a good ruler?

Isabel believed, with all her heart, that her mother was a good queen, and while her memories of her father were growing dim she thought there had never been a better prince consort. What _made_ them good, though, was something that had only occurred to her gradually rather than all at once. It was because the great kings and queens of Zootopia had placed their subjects above themselves no matter the cost.

Queen Alicia II had starved alongside her subjects when a horrible drought had hit the kingdom, and her legacy was the elaborate plumbing that covered practically the whole of Zootopia to keep it from ever happening again. King Oveja V, in the perilous aftermath of his father's descent into madness, had married a ewe he never loved because it would help restore the kingdom's stability and the nobility's confidence in the throne. Princess Laila, who had been born eldest but so sickly that even with alchemy a simple cut was a life-threatening injury, had stood aside from her birthright to allow her younger but healthier sister to ascend the throne.

But for many kings and queens, such a pivotal moment had never come. They had ruled over a flourishing kingdom without ever facing a crisis that demanded such a sacrifice. That might not have been fair, perhaps—surely even in the most peaceful of times, there had been difficult decisions to make and opportunities to show off their mettle—but what Isabel had been left with was a question she could hardly answer.

Did _she_ have that kind of strength within her?

As Isabel prepared to leave her carriage, it occurred to her that there had never been a royal such as herself. When she looked at the great golden doors in the palace outside the throne room and the family tree inscribed on it, her own name didn't stand out much only because her portrait hadn't been added yet. When her twentieth birthday finally came, though, she knew the difference from her ancestors would be obvious. Her peculiar blend of traits, both prey and predator, had always made her different, and when she looked for a resemblance to her predecessors it seemed always to elude her.

But, perhaps ironically, she was also the member of the royal family who most obviously belonged to it. Many of her forefathers, if they had shed their elaborate clothes and jewelry, could have walked any of the streets of Zootopia completely unremarked. They would have been only another sheep, one of the seemingly endless multitude that could be found anywhere from the poorest farms to the wealthiest shops to the grandest noble houses.

Isabel, however, would always stick out.

If there was another chimera precisely like herself she had never heard of them; chimeras were vanishingly rare and ones who combined both predator and prey even more so. It had been one of the reasons it had been such an unexpected delight to meet Commandant Totchli; it was true that she was obviously a rabbit with a fox arm rather than a complete blend of the two species, but it still gave them something in common. Besides, from what Captain Nicholas had said, the differences went much deeper than just Totchli's arm and the traces of fox fur that went up her shoulder. Most of the rabbit's organs had been replaced with copies of the fox's, or at least so he had claimed. Isabel saw no reason to doubt him—the captain had all the signs of an incredibly talented and clever alchemist—and she had been looking forward to speaking with him again. She harbored a desire to learn alchemy herself, and what Nicholas had shown had been quite impressive. She had, quite simply, _liked_ the fox, which made it difficult to believe he was a traitor.

Certainly she had been cautioned, throughout her life, that there would be mammals who would say anything she wished to hear in the hopes of getting in her good graces, that by being a princess there would always be those who saw her only as a means to an end. Bogo himself had warned her of it, but...

Bogo hadn't seemed himself lately.

That, more than anything, had been what spurred Isabel to action, and it was why she was regarding one of the windows of her carriage dressed in a borrowed set of guard armor that didn't quite fit. Her carriage had, after all, all the supplies that guards would need to ensure her safety, which had included not just weapons but several uniforms and pieces of armor in a variety of sizes. Unfortunately, her chimeric nature meant that she was somewhat awkwardly sized and proportioned, everything too big or too small. She had done her best to alter them, though. Rolling in the cuffs of the trousers to make them shorter would have doubtlessly struck any actual member of the City Guard as unacceptably sloppy up close, and adding wadded up strips torn from a silk sheet to make the chest armor fit a bit better didn't do much to keep the bottom from banging against the top of her tail every now and then. She had opted for gloves—the fact that she had both paws and hooves was one of the parts of her appearance that had always struck her as painfully noticeable—and hid the glow of her platinum torc as best she could with the collar of the uniform tunic.

As Isabel used a spoon that she had flattened to remove the screws securing the bars to a window, she couldn't help but wonder if she was doing the right thing. It was a horrible feeling, but one that she was all too familiar with; none of the aspects of being a royal had ever come easily to her. She always felt as though she was simply acting and hoping that no one would catch on and notice that she was no smarter or stronger or kinder than anyone else. That however the gods might have blessed her mother and her ancestors, they had passed her over.

That was a fear she had never, ever told anyone, not even her mother, and Isabel had no intention of ever changing that. Maybe she was being foolish, and all she was doing was pointlessly risking her life. Someone _had_ tried killing her, after all, and not just once. If it hadn't been for Commandant Totchli and Captain Nicholas, she would have died, and it made her certain that the fox simply couldn't be involved. He had wasted a perfect opportunity to kill her without drawing attention to himself, but even when Isabel had pointed that out, Bogo had been... _off_.

As Isabel fought with a particularly stubborn screw she realized she was getting dangerously close to stripping, she scowled at it and slowed down, working more carefully. It was like it was embodying all her irritation with Bogo, but she wasn't sure if it was really his fault. Isabel barely remembered Grandpapa Mateo, her father's father, since he had died a few years before her father did, but she had the vivid impression of a confused old jaguar who had seemed to think that she was Queen Lana II. He had been a bit like Bogo had been acting, prone to disturbingly long lapses of silence before saying things that just didn't quite make sense no matter how certain his tone had been. It must have been hard for her father to watch his own father decline; Isabel suddenly remembered how his eyes had been wet at the funeral.

She paused a moment as she let the memory wash over her. Sometimes it seemed like her memories of her father were too precious to take out and examine, or maybe it was just that they were too painful. Whatever the case, though, Isabel was glad to have it. Would her father have approved of what she was doing?

Isabel realized she had no idea; he had died when she was much too young. Or perhaps he had been killed, as Bogo thought. That was something that Bogo had never told her, nor had anyone else, but she had gotten the sense of it through the corners of conversations, between what was said and what was not. She had wondered, but not quite dared ask, if the attempts on her own life was some trap years in the making finally closing, what had started with her father ending with her. Or, then again, perhaps not with her. Perhaps her mother would be last. If someone had wished to see her mother suffer, Isabel was hard-pressed to think of anything that would have been a crueler torture, to watch first her husband and then her daughter die. The thought almost stopped her from continuing to remove screws.

Almost.

Isabel had gone back and forth several times now, her certainty coming and going in waves. But if Bogo's mind was going soft—or, worse, if someone was _making_ it go soft—she couldn't rely on him. His answers to her questions had lately had a peculiar quality to them, as though he was speaking of things he had been told rather than things he had seen. She thought she knew the buffalo about as well as she knew any of the mammals who spent a great deal of time in the palace, and he had always been a solid and dependable presence. He had never lost his temper with her, but Isabel knew he had one, no matter how carefully he hid it. Behind that impassive face was a boiling cauldron of emotion, and she had learned to read the signs that most mammals probably missed due to his intimidating bulk. He should have been seething at Captain Nicholas's supposed betrayal, his words tightly snapped off and his posture even stiffer than usual. Instead he had sounded as though was trying to talk himself into believing what he had said.

Isabel wasn't sure what could possibly affect a mammal's mind so greatly while still leaving them more or less normal. If Bogo had drank to excess, or consumed one of the plants that were said to provide visions from the gods, he would have been different, but in a predictable way. Babbling and slurring his words, his eyes dilated and his movements unsteady, all of the things she had read about but never experienced. Bogo's mind falling apart with age seemed closest to what Isabel had observed, but from what she had been told of Grandpapa Mateo it had been a slow and gradual decline for him, not something that had come on instantly. What that left Isabel wasn't quite sure, but it did leave her with another paranoid fear.

What if the same thing was happening to Totchli?

Perhaps Isabel had been reading too many romances—they were her guiltiest and most secret pleasure—but she thought there had been _something_ between the fox and the bunny. Something more than just friendship; the way they looked at each other had called up long-buried memories of how her parents had looked at each other. There was a fondness there, and something else she couldn't quite describe. A hunger, perhaps? As though if she hadn't been there they would have embraced each other, pulling together into a kiss that never—

Isabel shook her head, her ears flushing with embarrassment. She wasn't doing anything but distracting herself from her task, her mind wandering away from the tedious job of removing all of the many screws. Why'd they have to be so long, anyway? Her paws were cramping up and she stretched them as best she could, her claws going in and out as she did.

When the throbbing went down to a more manageable level, Isabel set to work again, deliberately focusing on nothing but the screws. She tried to push all of her worries—about what she was doing, about her mother, about Bogo, about Totchli, about Nicholas—aside and keep her mind blank. Eventually, with a sound of triumph that was somewhere between a bleat and a growl, the last screw came free

Isabel took a moment to examine her appearance in the mirror before moving onto the next stage of her plan, trying to cast a critical eye over what someone else would see. There was no avoiding the fact that if someone examined her too closely, it was obvious who she was. She felt almost as if she was wearing an enormous sign, with giant letters made of alchemical torches, saying, "I'M PRINCESS ISABEL!" but she tried not to focus on that.

If someone else saw her from a distance they hopefully wouldn't notice. Hopefully. With so much of her body covered by the borrowed City Guard uniform, and with the ill-fitting clothes hiding the shape of her body, it really came down to if someone would notice her face. There was, unfortunately, little she could do about that—the standard City Guard uniform didn't include a conveniently face-concealing helmet. It had been one of the reforms to the uniforms made long before her own birth, a way of making the guardsmammals appear more approachable and less threatening. Isabel had always thought it was a good idea, but now that she needed something to disguise herself she was wishing that it hadn't been made.

Her eyes wandered the room, searching for anything she could use to change her appearance even a little. If there had been a pair of scissors, perhaps she could have tried trimming her woolly fur, which was so unlike any other mammal, but there didn't seem to be any. But then her eyes fell upon the small case of a writing set she had recently used for another part of her plan and an idea occurred to her.

Working carefully, trying to avoid getting any on her clothes, Isabel used the ink pot and started blackening the tawny parts of her head. It definitely wouldn't pass close inspection—there hadn't been enough ink to make her fur pitch black, and from a few inches away the lighter coloration would have surely been visible—but Isabel didn't think she'd call attention to herself from a distance. With a grimace, Isabel tucked her tail up against her back, hiding its unusual length and coloring as best she could, and then examined her reflection again as she belted a sword to her waist under her cloak. It'd have to do, at least until she got to where she wanted to go.

When Isabel removed the bars from the window, which came off easily with nothing holding them in place, she had a heart-stopping moment as she thought she saw someone watching her. But it was only a shadow, and she cursed her jumpiness as she waited for her heart to slow down. If the heroes of stories had been afraid of shadows, it certainly never made it into those stories.

With the moment passed, Isabel lowered herself out of the carriage as quickly as she could, desperately saying a prayer in her head that no one would notice. She had chosen the window on the opposite side of the door, where she knew a guard was stationed. There hadn't been any guards facing the window, but that, at least, had not been sloppiness on Bogo's part. The guards were alert for something coming _towards_ the carriages, not _from_ the carriages, and Isabel crept quietly away. Her heart was pounding louder than ever, but she had almost done it. She was—"Hey!" an unfamiliar voice barked, "What are you doing so close to the princess's carriage?"

Isabel spun, dread filling her heart, and faced a burly wolf in a lieutenant's uniform. "I— I was supposed to go to one of the supply carriages, sir," she managed, trying to give her voice a deeper and huskier tone.

The lieutenant huffed, rolling his eyes. "Well this isn't it," he said, "They're _that_ way."

He pointed with the tip of his spear, and Isabel snapped a sharp salute. "Thank you, sir," she said, and the wolf nodded dismissively.

It was all Isabel could do not to break into a run or stagger as she walked away, amazed at her luck. The wolf had, it seemed, barely paid any attention to her, but she supposed the saying she had heard really was true. The clothes made the mammal, and confronted with a deferential mammal in a City Guard uniform heading away from the direction of the royal carriage, she must have been much less suspicious than she had thought.

Still, she didn't want to wait long enough for anyone to notice her absence, and quickly made her way to to where she had been heading all along, keeping her head down and stepping aside to let other mammals pass. At last, she made it to the deep chasm that surrounded Phoenix and, more importantly, to where Commandant Totchli had descended into the darkness. The rope the bunny had used was still there, guarded by a rather bored-looking pair of mammals who threw glances of longing at the soldiers briskly ordering themselves into columns near the repaired bridge.

As she approached, Isabel withdrew a piece of parchment and flashed it at them. "I've got orders to go after the rabbit," she said, her voice surprisingly steady to her ears even with her heart in her throat, "Signed by—"

The taller of the pair, a heavily built female ox, snatched the page from Isabel's paw and started examining it. She was nearly as worried about the letter passing inspection as she had been about leaving her carriage; although she had had the right paper and seal to make something look as though it came from an official source, she had been forced to try forging the signature from memory. "Bogo himself," the ox said, her voice surprisingly high-pitched and feminine for so large a mammal.

She shook her head, exchanging a glance with the male bison at her side, who couldn't have been more than two or three inches shorter. "Better you than one of us," she said, and the bison chuckled his agreement, adding, "What'd you do to piss him off?"

"I— Uh—" Isabel stammered, floundering for words.

Why hadn't she considered what she'd do if they tried making conversation? Or at least forged a set of orders from someone lower on the chain of command? "Dropped his best breastplate," Isabel improvised, unable to stop her voice from rising at the end and making it sound like a question.

The pair of guards winced with identical expressions of sympathy. "Well, good luck ensign," the ox said, shaking her head again, "Waiting at the bottom of a pit for the rabbit to show up sounds like loads of fun."

She had put a slightly cynical spin on Totchli's species, and Isabel couldn't help but feel a touch offended on her behalf. But she was in no mood to give the guards an opportunity to realize she wasn't just a luckless officer drawing a punishment assignment and she started for the rope. "Hey, ensign?" the bison asked, and Isabel turned to him, trying to keep her expression neutral.

Had he noticed the sword she had hidden under her cloak? Or the gleam of her platinum torc? Her heart pounded louder than ever, and Isabel could feel her limbs trembling even as she tried forcing them to stop. "Now, maybe this is rude, but I ain't never seen a mammal like you. What's your species?"

"Chicimazatl" Isabel invented wildly, and the bison nodded.

"Never heard of that," he said cheerfully, "Take care down there, ensign!"

The ox and bison both gave Isabel a lazy wave, and just like that, she was lowering herself into the bowels of the ruins under Phoenix.

* * *

 **Author's notes:**

Going to Isabel's perspective is something I've looked forward to doing; hopefully you also found it interesting.

This chapter contains a somewhat oblique reference to chapter 14; King Oveja IV's descent into paranoid madness is described there, and this chapter indicates King Oveja V had the difficult job of restoring order and stability following his father's purges. This does also indicate that King Oveja IV's brother, who took the throne after King Oveja IV abdicated it, didn't have his own child become ruler. Princess Laila's condition is intended to be suggestive of hemophilia, which was extremely common in the royal families of Europe in the 19th century.

Chapter 12 is where the great golden doors inscribed with the royal family tree is mentioned; as described there, the portraits are only engraved either after the member of the family reaches age 20 or dies, whichever comes first.

Screws were probably first used in wooden screw presses sometime before the first century BCE, but what we consider modern metal screws likely didn't appear until about the 15th century, and remained quite rare until industrial processes for rapidly and cheaply machining screws appeared in the 18th century. However, the existence of alchemy in this setting does mean that such fasteners could be very easily made by even a relatively unskilled alchemist; a single "perfect" screw could be endlessly replicated. The fact that the princess can use a flattened spoon to remove the bars from the window suggests that it's either a flathead screw (the first common type) or a relatively wide Philips-head.

"Chicimazatl" isn't a real Nahuatl word, but it'd mean "dog deer" in English.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought!


	58. Chapter 58

Judy froze as the voice came again, desperation making the word ragged and raw. "Help!" Nicholas's voice cried.

She played her torch down the hallway, but it was coming from too far away to be able to see exactly where it was coming from. The blackness yawned before Judy, seemingly endless, and the splatters and pools of blood continued for as far as the light went. "It could be a Ehecatl," the Nicholas who lived in her head cautioned.

He was standing at her side, his ears pricked up and swiveling slightly as he peered into the gloom. The insubstantial fox turned to look at Judy and added, "I can't see far enough to be sure."

Judy was barely paying attention, though. It was entirely possible that it was a trap, one either baited by the fox she was hunting or by a monster. The real Nicholas might already be dead, with some feathery beast over his corpse mimicking his voice to lure her in. None of that mattered. Judy's heart was in her throat as she charged down the corridor, her sword at the ready, and she strained her ears to their limits.

She had to capture Nicholas. She had to. It was beyond any explanation Judy could give as to why it was so important to her; if the fox was dead her mission would still be accomplished. But she needed to drag him out of the depths below Phoenix and make him pay for his crimes.

 _I need to see him again._

The thought, as sudden and bright as a bolt of lightning and just as distracting, came to Judy as she ran. She almost stumbled but caught herself just in time, pushing herself to run as fast as she could. The Nicholas in her head was running beside her, but the glimpses of him she caught out of the corner of her eyes made it look as though it cost him absolutely no effort. His face was almost placid but it seemed to be touched with concern, and when he spoke his words were just as even as though he was doing nothing more physically demanding than sitting down. "You're off balance," he said, and Judy knew he didn't mean how she had almost fallen over.

"I— need— to— catch— him," Judy managed to say as she ran, her words coming in tight bursts.

"You _want_ to catch him," the ghostly fox replied, "You don't need to."

Judy didn't have anything she could say that would counter that. It wasn't something that she could have explained, even if she hadn't been running and could have spoken freely; it was an almost overwhelming impulse running through her head. The desire, the need, to catch him was only building, blotting out any other thoughts as she sprinted down the corridor. "You need to slow down," the other Nicholas urged, "Whether it's a monster or him, all you're—"

" _Have_ to," Judy hissed, interrupting him.

Under less urgent circumstances, it might have been touching that he cared about the risk she was taking. But there was no time for second thoughts, not when the fox she was pursuing might be in mortal danger. Nicholas's voice hadn't come again since she had started running, but the blood dripping from the walls and pooling on the floor was only increasing in volume, sticky paw prints leading through it showing where he had been. Judy's alchemical torch bobbed as she ran, its cone of light throwing everything into the sharp relief of its harsh life.

The Nicholas in her head said only, "Be careful," in a quiet voice before he fell silent, his head turning in every direction as he seemed to keep watch himself.

And then, when her lungs felt about ready to burst and spots were starting to dance in front of her eyes as her blood pounded through her veins, Judy saw a rag-covered lump caught in her torch. The rags might have been a bright red once, but they were so blood-soaked that they had turned a deep maroon color. Even more blood pooled around the lump, and there were tracks in the blood that looked like finger marks from someone desperately scrabbling for purchase.

Judy's heart seemed to miss a beat as she took in the awful scene. She was too late. Whatever had killed the fox was already gone, blood streaking randomly along the walls in lines that almost looked as though they had been painted there. Judy slowed to a stop, and helpless tears filled her eyes.

She had failed.

As she looked at the remains of what had been her quarry, the few spots of red-orange fur making it clear that it really was the body of the fox who had tormented her so, she couldn't help the memory that filled her head.

Nicholas had given her a small golden carrot, teasing her as he said she could wear it on her torc when she was off duty. "If members of the City Guard are ever off duty, of course," he had said, and a hatefully smug smile had crossed his lips.

He must have known, in that moment, that to give a doe from Totchli Barony an ornament for her torc was to propose to her; his act of complete innocence must have been exactly that. Judy was sure of it, completely and utterly, but something nagged at her mind. Wasn't there something she had said to him, once? Something that had been...

"Judy!"

She looked up dully at the other Nicholas, who had said her name as though he had already spoken it several times. She realized she had been too distracted to realize he had been trying to get her attention, but focusing on his words seemed harder than usual. Her blood seemed to have gone cold and sluggish in her veins, and even the grays of the tunnel seemed more colorless than they had before.

Her ghostly companion, though, had a face filled with a sense of urgency Judy wasn't sure she would ever feel again. How could she, when she had already failed? "What?" Judy asked flatly.

"You need to get out of here now!" he said, the gesturing toward where they had come from, "It's a—"

The ghostly fox never got the chance to finish his sentence. The bloody smears and dabs covering the walls suddenly filled with a brilliantly pure light of almost blinding brightness. What had seemed like random splotches and lines caused by nothing more purposeful than a brutal mauling hid cunningly concealed patterns and symbols, and as they activated something seemed to tear at the inside of Judy's head.

Judy fell to her knees, clawing at her forehead, and barely even felt the scratches she left in her own skin. The pain was unbelievable, and it accompanied an awful _pulling_ sensation as though a farmer was pulling up a stubborn weed with its roots wrapped around her mind. A terrible scream filled the air, and it was only when Judy's throat began to feel raw that she realized she was the source.

Her thoughts were a swirling mess that refused to sort themselves out into any kind of order. There was an awful kind of duality to them, and even her vision swam before her. Judy's intangible companion was fading into even greater translucence, his eyes wide with horror in what seemed to be an echo of the pain that she felt herself. As he faded Judy felt another wrenching sensation in her head even as she desperately reached out her paw but managed to close over nothing. Her alchemical winked out, but in the instant before the light vanished Judy could see only the wall of the corridor.

He was gone.

Judy was already on her knees but she slumped even further to the ground. "Nicholas," she said, and her voice was hoarse and raspy from her screaming.

The tears that had filled her eyes flowed down her cheeks and were absorbed by the thirsty ground. _I never even gave him a name of his own_ , she thought to herself. The ghostly fox had been her loyal companion, assisting her as best he could with no reality of his own. He had even tried warning her, and she had ignored it. Now he was gone, probably forever, and—"Carrots!" a familiar voice interrupted her thoughts, "Sorry for the scare, but I'm glad to see it worked."

The fox was standing before her, a relieved smile crossing his face. But he was undeniably solid, and Judy saw the trail of bloody footprints he had left in his wake. It was the real Nicholas, and for a moment it was all Judy could do to look up at him, frozen with emotion. "A pretty good fake though, wouldn't you say?" he continued, seeming to speak to fill the silence, and he gestured at the slumped and ragged form on the ground by his side, "I had to be sure you'd get close enough to walk into the anti-alchemy array I drew."

He gestured widely to take in the circle he was standing in and Judy was on her knees in. There was, now that he had pointed it out, a distinct resemblance to what had been in the cell; the patterns were somewhat more elaborate, perhaps, but they glowed in a similar serene fashion under the blood that had hidden them, and the alchemical torch at Judy's feet was completely nonfunctional.

And the other Nick was gone.

He had warned her. Not just about the trap she had foolishly blundered into, but about what might happen if she set foot inside an anti-alchemy array. He had warned her that it might destroy him, whatever complex magic had given him life fading into nothingness the way her alchemical torch had. But the torch, Judy knew, would start glowing again the instant she stepped out of the circle. As for the fox who had lived in her head...

"Nicholas," Judy said again.

"It's alright," the fox standing in front of her said, his voice quite gentle, "It's alright. Let me just get that torc off your neck."

He bent over and reached for her neck, his eyes looking straight into hers. "How do you feel?" he asked.

His voice was still gentle, the words filled with concern. Judy studied his face for a moment, considering the question. The answer came as slowly as the fox's paws moved as they grasped the sides of her torc.

Nicholas had murdered the version of himself that lived in her head, and her loathing for him reached a level it never had before. Without any further thought, Judy's paw closed around the hilt of the sword she had dropped as she fell to the ground.

And then Judy thrust it upwards into the fox's unprotected stomach as hard as she could.


	59. Chapter 59

Everything had been going perfectly until she stabbed him in the gut.

The thought almost made Nick smile as he collapsed to the ground, Judy's torc clutched in one paw. _I really should have known better_ , he thought as the dull walls of the tunnel started swirling around him and an icy coldness with a burning core spread from where the blade had entered his stomach, _The gods wouldn't let it go so smoothly._

Nick had planned his trap in meticulous detail, the power of his stolen philosopher's stone making it almost trivial to set up. Transmuting raw stone into a copy of his own arm had felt as easy as activating an alchemical torch with the force of the stone behind his alchemy, and even the fake corpse had been no more difficult than turning lead into gold. Making blood had been simpler still, although as his vision started dimming it occurred to him that he could really use some more of it inside his body.

The worst of the pain was gone, and he wasn't sure if that was good or bad. Probably bad, though. He could feel how cold the ground was against his cheek, but almost nothing from where he had been stabbed. That was kind of funny, wasn't it? Not the sort of joke he'd laugh at, but still. Funny.

Nick coughed weakly, noticing the droplets of blood that sprayed out with a calmly detached air, and it was as though a brand had been touched to his stomach. _Ah, there it is._ The pain exploded back with a vengeance, and he might have curled up into a ball if he had still had any strength with which to do so. Judy wasn't moving, but it was hard to worry about that.

 _Sorry Carrots, but I've got my own problems right now_ , he thought as he tried pulling himself along the ground with one arm. He had been stupid in a way he never was; it had seemed so obvious in the moment that all he'd have to do to break the hold Cerdo had put on Judy was to cut off the alchemical power in her torc. That the control wouldn't simply instantly end hadn't even occurred to him. And when he had activated his cunningly concealed anti-alchemy array, it had seemed to work perfectly. Seeing Judy clawing at her head, leaving bloody tracks where her blunt nails dug into the skin, had hurt as much as a sword through his heart. Nick coughed again, and Judy's sword shifted slightly inside of him, bringing with it another agonizing wave of pain. Vivid colors danced before his eyes in a riotous explosion, and Nick amended his thought. It hadn't hurt _quite_ as much as being stabbed, but seeing Judy clearly so distressed had hurt. It wasn't the sort of thing he would have ever admitted to anyone else, and it seemed like he might never get the chance to admit it to her, but the depth of his feeling had been almost shocking.

When was the last time he had ever cared so much about seeing someone in pain? Had there even been a last time? He had stepped past the poor and the broken of Zootopia's worst slums, always confident that he'd never make a mistake like whatever it was they had done. He had pulled himself up from nothing, from being a fox, and made a comfortable living. If he could do it, certainly anyone else could.

It was what he had always told himself, anyway.

Better to think that he was somehow special in his will and his drive alone, that he had done it all alone and without luck. That if a few things had tipped the other way, he would have still come out on top, that he'd never be reduced to crawling and begging for scraps. And yet, here he was. Bleeding out from a sword that had gone right through him, while the mammal he had come to care about lay limp and unresponsive on the floor near him.

He had been overconfident. Not just in his plan for saving Judy, although he had been overconfident there. He had been overconfident his entire life, and why shouldn't he be? Every sticky situation he had ever found himself in he had gotten out of. He had suffered, certainly, but he had never truly lost.

Until now.

Nick let go of Judy's torc and let it hit the ground, trying to use both paws to pull himself along. As he crawled inch after agonizing inch toward the edge of the anti-alchemy array, it was as though he had nothing but time to reflect on his mistakes. And that was the funny part, too. The wound to his stomach was terrible—he didn't have to be able to see it to know that—but the power of the philosopher's stone meant that he could easily fix it. If, that was, he wasn't stuck in his own trap, the stone a dull and lifeless red with its power blocked from his use. He was going to bleed out in a trap of his own devising, it seemed, and if there was any sign the gods had a sense of humor that was it.

Nick chuckled and immediately regretted it. His forward motion stopped entirely as the pain blossomed again like the world's worst flower unfurling in new and exciting ways. He hadn't even known his guts were capable of feeling such pain. And that was his fault, too. He could have left his breastplate on rather than carelessly casting it aside. Even as sharp as Judy's sword was, it wouldn't have penetrated the armor, he was sure; the blade would have glanced off. Then he could have gotten about actually saving Judy from what he had done to her, which was also entirely his fault. Cerdo had done something to her mind through the torc's power, and he had tried cutting off the alchemy from the torc entirely and in a single instant. What if the only way to safely end the pig's control was for him to release it? If Judy hadn't died—and he had never wished for something as much as he wished for her to still be alive—he might have broken her mind, like he was trying to remove something tacked onto a crystal vase by using a hammer. If she did wake up, would she have any sense of herself anymore, even the version who was fanatically loyal to Cerdo?

But he had been so confident he had succeeded. She had called out his name, after his trap activated, and there had been genuine pain in her voice rather than loathing or hatred. Nick had believed that she had come back to her senses and was reaching out to him. He had been so eager to believe it that it hadn't even bothered him that she had called the name "Nicholas."

The edge of the anti-alchemy array couldn't have been more than three feet away—why had he made it so _large?_ —but it might as well have been on the moon. The idea of dying, deep under Phoenix and having failed Judy, should have been more bothersome, but the emotion seemed to be draining out of his thoughts. It was almost comforting, in a way, that the sourness of his regrets was leaving him just as the blood oozing from his wound was. There was almost something peaceful about it, but Nick kept pulling himself along.

He wasn't sure how much time was passing for each inch of progress. How long did it take to bleed to death from a sword wound, anyway? It wasn't something that he had ever had to know. Judy probably would have been able to tell him, but he was in no shape to ask and she was in no shape to answer. So, if nothing else, it'd be a surprise. Maybe he could make it another foot. Maybe all the way out to where the philosopher's stone would work.

He had to try.

That was what Judy would have done, too. He had thought it a little ridiculous when they had first met; clearly she was just behind the curve. The world, with its casually cruel indifference, would surely pull her down as it had him. But she had never stopped trying.

And so, for her sake, he forced himself forward. It felt like a supreme effort of will for such a pitiful amount of progress, but Nick kept going. The next foot was harder than any transmutation he had ever done, harder than his fumbling and desperate attempt to save Judy's arm. He was panting with the effort, the coppery taste of blood strong in his throat. He forced himself onward again, and the edge of the anti-alchemy array grew closer and closer.

And then there it was. First only the tips of his claws made it over the glowing border, and then the rest of his body slowly followed until he was on his side just beyond the edge of his trap. Nick reached for his pocket, and for one heart-stopping moment he thought he had lost the philosopher's stone until his fingers finally closed over something smooth and warm. When Nick drew it out the philosopher's stone burned with the most beautiful light he had ever seen, but his paw didn't seem to want to obey his commands. His fingers were stiff and clumsy, his entire arm shaking. He stopped for a moment, trying to hold himself perfectly still, and for an instant his paw stopped trembling. As slowly as he could manage he tried bringing his fingers to his wound and then it happened.

The philosopher's stone squirted out of his fingers, and it was all he could do to watch it roll away, the light inside it winking out like an extinguished candle as it crossed the line of the anti-alchemy array and kept going. It bounced on the uneven floor of the tunnel before finally coming to a stop near one of Judy's ears. Nick laughed, and even the pain of it couldn't make him stop. It wasn't as bad as it had been, at least, everything fading into a sort of dull numbness, and it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. Everything leading up to this moment had only been the setup for the punchline, and here at last he knew what it was. It wasn't that he was going to die due to a combination of his own arrogance and poor planning. _That_ would have been too simple. No, he was going to die after having made it far enough that he could have saved himself, if only his blood-slicked paws had managed to keep a grasp on the slippery little stone. _The gods have to be enjoying this_ , Nick thought as his laughter petered out. He didn't have the strength to keep himself even vaguely supported and he let himself fall to the floor.

There was no making it back to the stone.

Getting outside the circle had cost him everything he had, and there was nothing left inside him to do the crawl back to the center to grab it and then back out to actually use it. The only other philosopher's stone he could have used—the one inside Judy's torc—was a little closer, but still within the confines of the anti-alchemy array. Nick realized he ought to have kept it—why hadn't he taken the effort?—but it was too late. There wasn't enough time left to save himself, but...

Judy wouldn't give up.

If it had been her, having almost bled to death with a hope, even a slim one, available to her, she would have gone after it. She would have tried. And so Nick tried to pull himself back toward her limp body and the stone near her, but there simply wasn't any strength left in his paws. The blackness at the edges of his vision was spreading, and his heart was beating sluggishly in his chest. Nick feebly reached forward again, but his body was impossibly heavy, far too much for him to move.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

His vision swam in and out of focus, Judy's inert form doubling. Was she still breathing? He couldn't tell. And then there was something in front of him, blocking his view. Nick tried protesting, but the only sound that came out of his mouth was a vague and meaningless noise. There were two objects, he realized, not just one that he was seeing two of as his eyes failed him. Two pillars, covered in something with an unusual texture that looked ever so soft. Nick tried reaching for one, but his paw only twitched before falling to the floor again.

The next moment, there was a face looking into his eyes, one he should have known. The objects had been legs, then. Maybe it should have meant something, but it didn't seem to matter. The face wasn't Judy's anyway, and that had been all he had wanted to see. It was... The name wouldn't come. He had always been good with faces and names, but that connection in his mind seemed to have been lost. It was an odd face, though. A peculiar blend of predator and prey, of sheep and jaguar. Almost like the princess.

There was only a dim flicker of recognition as Nick realized it _was_ the princess. It didn't seem terribly unusual that she had made her way down to the ruins. Why not? Having a royal witness to his death was more than any of his ancestors could claim.

Her lips were moving, but Nick couldn't quite make out the words. There was nothing but a rush of sound, getting louder and louder, until suddenly he knew what she was saying. "Captain Nicholas!" she shouted, and Nick's ears pricked back at the thunderous noise, "What do I do?"

There was panic etched into her youthful face, and Nick felt a twinge of sympathy. He knew what it was like to be young and in over his head. "Stone," he managed, and although he didn't have the strength to gesture he twitched one finger vaguely in the direction of the philosopher's stone, "Get stone."

He wasn't sure if she had understood him or not, but speaking had drained the last of his reserves. His eyelids closed, and he knew no more.


	60. Chapter 60

Isabel supposed that most mammals read epic stories of adventure for the same reason that she did, no matter how absurd it might sound to a commoner. Why would a princess, of all mammals, wish to escape her life and lose herself in a tale of danger and treachery? Part of it, though, was that there was a sort of vicarious thrill in seeing how the characters in a story rose to the challenges they faced. Her own life consisted mostly of endless tutoring and training to prepare her for controlling the kingdom, but there was still some appeal in the idea of staring down a monster in single combat and emerging victorious. Of being utterly fearless. Of being absolutely certain of every action, of being worthy to stand beside the gods themselves.

But Isabel was terrified.

She had thought she was brave before, when she had made the enormous decision to sneak out of her carriage and bluff her way past the guards. Isabel had been afraid, certainly, but she had always heard that it a mammal couldn't be brave without at least a little fear. It had made her proud of herself, in a way, that she had done something she never would have guessed she could.

But that had been before lowering herself into the gloomy darkness of the ruins of Quimichpatlan Barony, where it seemed like light could barely leave her torch before being swallowed. There was something oppressive about it, as though it was not merely the lack of light but something more. Like there was something lurking and quietly watching. Isabel could feel her skin crawl under her fur as the stories, which had once inspired her to bravery, suddenly worked against her. It had been easier to think of herself like Lady Mila, the fearless and long-dead tigress said to have defeated scores of monsters alone, before the thoughts of all the soldiers who had perished before her intruded into Isabel's mind. In the stories, those hapless soldiers seemed to exist only to prove how dangerous the situation the heroine found herself in was, but as Isabel's feet touched ground it occurred to her that _she_ might be one of those nameless mammals. Isabel had taken a deep and shuddering breath, trying to force the thought from her mind, but her nerve nearly abandoned her. The inky blackness yawned all around her at the bottom of the pit and she realized she hadn't planned far enough ahead.

She had no idea what to do.

In her head, once she got underground it would be obvious what she had to do: find Captain Nicholas and Commandant Totchli and uncover the truth of whatever had happened. But as Isabel looked around, raising her torch to make the light travel as far as possible, it occurred to her that the ruins looked nothing like she had expected. It wasn't as though she was standing in the middle of a crumbling settlement that looked like one above ground; it was more like a tunnel. Isabel frowned, chewing at the inside of her mouth as she tried to slow down her heart and focus.

It _was_ a tunnel, more or less. And in a tunnel, there were really only two possible ways that someone could go: forward or backward. And thatmeant, in theory, that if she could tell which way Nicholas had gone, she'd just need to move fast enough to catch up to him.

Easy.

Or at least, she hoped it was. She played her torch over the ground, looking back and forth as she tried to figure out which way the fox had gone. And then, just as she about to choose a direction at random and pray to the gods to let her pick correctly, she spotted a shallow indentation in the ground. The gentle curve didn't look like much to her until she turned herself to the right angle, bringing her torch away from the ground. Isabel had known, ever since she was young, that she had excellent night vision, much as her father must have had, but her fear had been too great for her to realize what that actually meant for her in the subterranean passages.

Without the brilliance of the torch to wash out her vision, what she was looking at became obvious. It was the paw print of a rabbit, the edges blurred and indistinct—perhaps because rabbits didn't have paw pads—but obvious nonetheless. She could even make out the toes, and that seemed to settle things. Isabel recognized that _she_ might not be a very good tracker, but she sincerely hoped that Commandant Totchli was.

Her life might depend on it.

"Stop it."

Isabel spoke before realizing that she was going to, and her voice only amplified her fear. It was wavery and timid, and to her own ears sounded horribly weak. "Stop it!" Isabel repeated, somewhat louder, and she nearly jumped with fright as her words echoed back at her, twisted and distorted.

"STOP IT!" she roared, and when the cacophonous echo came back it didn't scare her.

"You can do this," Isabel told herself, somewhat more quietly, "You can. But you're not going to get anything done if you scare yourself. You can do this."

She repeated the words over and over to herself as she followed the rabbit's tracks, and as she continued on she even saw some that must have come from a fox. Isabel began following faster and faster, and as she went ever further away from where she had descended into the underbelly of Phoenix, something seemed to happen to her fear.

It didn't go away, and it didn't even seem to have lessened. But it had become more tolerable, somehow, and it no longer threatened to overwhelm her. As Isabel continued it occurred to her that, if what she was feeling was bravery, she didn't think she liked it very much.

* * *

Isabel nearly missed the point where both Nicholas and Totchli had turned down an almost invisible spur tunnel, and she permitted herself a moment to berate herself as she came to a stop. If she had kept running past where they had gone, she might have—"But I didn't," she murmured, and her voice was surprisingly steady to her ears, "I didn't."

When she squeezed into the side tunnel, it at first didn't appear too drastically different. Crumbling tiles lined it, falling out in places like a mammal with a mouthful of bad teeth. Thick dust coated everything and actually made it easier to follow the tracks she had almost foolishly overlooked. As she kept going, though, that eventually changed.

There was blood everywhere.

The princess's eyes widened with horror as she took it in; it didn't seem possible for an elephant, let alone a fox or a rabbit, to lose so much blood and still be alive. It was splashed along the walls and floor, even the ceiling, and the sharp metallic scent of it filled her nose and made her gag. Isabel's heart pounded faster than it ever had, her paw not holding her torch taking a death grip on her sword, which she drew and held out straight before her.

And then her heart seemed to freeze in her chest as she came upon the mammals she had been seeking. There was a glowing alchemical array covering part of the corridor, and inside it were three motionless forms. Commandant Totchli was on her side, her head facing Isabel, but although her eyes were open they had rolled back and only the whites were visible. Something so badly mauled it was barely recognizable as a corpse was at the center of the array. And there, just beyond the edge of the array, was Captain Nicholas, a sword piercing his chest and protruding from his back.

Isabel rushed over to him, and as she got closer realized that she had been wrong. He wasn't completely still, but his breath came at alarmingly irregular intervals and was so weak that his chest barely moved. Isabel bent over, putting her face right in his. "Are you alright?" she asked, and immediately realized how stupid a question that was.

The poor fox had a sword completely passing through his stomach, which was absolutely soaked in what could have only been his own blood. His eyes moved fractionally, appearing glazed and unfocused as he took her in. "Captain Nicholas!" she yelled, and panic made her voice go higher, "What do I do?"

One of his fingers twitched toward the still form of Commandant Totchli. "Stone," he said, his voice less than even a whisper.

Isabel had no idea what the fox could possibly mean; the tunnel was full of stones. He feebly licked his lips and mumbled something that she couldn't quite make out, and then his head dropped down to the floor. _Stone_ , she thought, looking wildly around the corridor as though something would present itself, _What did he mean?_

No matter how she looked, all Isabel saw was the dismal tunnel, which was full of stones of all sorts of sizes. There were pebbles that might have been part of tiles, larger rocks from where parts of the tunnel had given way, and things that might have just been clumps of dust. But he _must_ have meant something, and Isabel tried to figure it out.

Staring at Commandant Totchli didn't tell her anything, except that the rabbit was in fact alive; her breathing was slow and even. Isabel rushed over to her, hoping against hope that Nicholas hadn't simply been delirious from his injury, and nearly stepped on a blood-covered rock by her ear. Isabel bent over and started frantically going through Totchli's uniform, searching the pockets for a stone, and it was only when she found nothing did the importance of what she had seen occur to her.

Isabel scooped up the bloody little object and realized what should have been obvious when she first saw it. Under its slick red coating it was simply too regular, too round, to be natural. When she rubbed the blood away the stone was a dull and milky gray, like a poorly made marble, and she couldn't understand why the alchemist wanted it. And then, a moment after staring at the stone, she nearly hit herself at the realization of her foolishness. The answer was right in front of her; it had to be a philosopher's stone.

Which meant, in turn, that the array she was in had to be one that blocked alchemy. Isabel had no idea why Nicholas would have made such an array—had he, perhaps, worked out some kind of solution as to what could alter mammal's minds?—but she rushed out of it, nearly slipping in the tacky blood coating the floor as she did. The instant the stone crossed the edge of the array the stone burst into vibrant life, glowing with a brightness that made it seem almost fathomless, as though it was somehow larger.

There was no doubt that it was indeed a philosopher's stone, and with that realization came a wave of relief. That, at least, Isabel knew what to do with. She pulled her canteen off her shoulder, nearly breaking the strap in her haste, and fumbled with the cap. When it was at last open Isabel dropped the stone into the water, and was rewarded with an almost immediate red glow from within the vessel.

Although Isabel knew that the Elixir of Life could be created even by someone who wasn't an alchemist, she had never done so before and was glad to see it working. She rolled Nicholas over on his side, hesitating for a moment. The Elixir of Life was supposed to be drunk, but the fox wasn't conscious anymore and he still had a sword in him. None of the stories she had ever read had prepared her for the situation she found herself in, so Isabel dribbled some of the glowing liquid into his mouth.

She watched Nicholas for a moment, but he didn't seem to be getting any better. Isabel hastily poured more of the elixir onto his wounds, where it had a more dramatic reaction; the blade started transmuting into gold. Isabel cursed herself; she should have remembered that the philosopher's stone could also transmute any metal into gold, and she had just wasted some of the precious liquid. Setting the canteen aside with far more care than she had removed the cap, Isabel wrapped both her paws around the sabre stuck in the fox and pulled it free. It came loose with a sickening ease and Isabel tossed it aside, taking up the canteen again and pouring the liquid directly into the hole.

For an instant, Isabel could _see_ the bloody mess of tissue within Nicholas knitting back together, and then skin and fur reformed and it was impossible to tell he had ever been injured. The fox still wasn't moving, but he seemed to be sleeping, his breathing much more regular and deeper. Isabel allowed herself a moment of pride before she stood up and looked at Commandant Totchli. The rabbit didn't seem to have moved an inch from how she had been posed as Isabel searched her; her eyes were still disturbingly half-open and her mouth slack. And, Isabel noticed for the first time, there were bloody tracks clawed down the doe's face that looked as though she had made them herself.

The princess frowned, and it occurred to her that she had no idea what circumstances had led to the scene she had stumbled upon. The anti-alchemy array had, almost certainly, been made by Nicholas, and the sabre that had been embedded in the fox was certainly Totchli's. That still left the pulped mass of flesh at the center of the array, though, which on closer inspection bore a striking resemblance to Nicholas. Which meant, what, exactly?

Isabel considered the possibilities. Had Nicholas set a trap for Totchli? Perhaps the fox-like shape at the center of the array had been the bait, but if was a trap it must have gone poorly for Nicholas. But then, which one of them deserved her support? Her gut had told her that Totchli must not have been acting in her right mind to stab Nicholas, but what might happen if she was wrong about that?

The more the princess thought about it, the less sure she was about what she should do. Hoping that her hunch wasn't wrong, she walked back into the array and carefully lifted Totchli; even in her armor the rabbit was light enough to easily carry. Isabel had hoped that Totchli would show some change the instant she was outside the circle, but nothing happened, her breathing remaining slow and her face slack.

Isabel carefully set her down, and then considered her canteen. When she shook it, the remaining elixir sloshed around but there was no rattle from the philosopher's stone; it must have been completely consumed in converting the water. She had about half of the Elixir of Life left, and that made her next decision a little easier. Hoping that it'd have some effect, Isabel carefully poured a small amount into Totchli's open mouth and then sat back.

The minutes seemed to drag on slowly as she watched the pair, but neither rabbit nor fox did anything. Until, that was, Totchli suddenly sat straight up with a massive gasp, her eyes going wide. "How do you feel?" Isabel asked, "What happened?"

Totchli turned and looked at Isabel, but there was something off about the way she did so that the princess just couldn't put a finger on. Her movements just didn't seem quite right, her posture a little more relaxed than Isabel had ever seen her and something about her expression wrong. Totchli blinked at her for a moment, a puzzled look crossing her face. "You can see me?" she asked, and then a frown immediately crossed her muzzle.

"Wait, what's wrong with—" Totchli began to say, and then she suddenly reached up and began patting her face as a look of horror blossomed across it.

"Oh no," she said, "No, no, no."

She was tugging at one of her long ears, pulling it in front of her eyes before heaving a massive sigh. "Fantastic," she said, "This is _just_ what I need."

"What's wrong, Commandant Totchli?" Isabel asked, more than a little alarmed at the rabbit's behavior.

The cynical smile that crossed Totchli's face before she answered was oddly familiar, but Isabel couldn't quite place it. "Well," Totchli said breezily, "For starters, I'm _not_ Commandant Totchli."


	61. Chapter 61

"I'm disappointed, Lord Bogo," Cerdo said.

His tone was mild but his eyes were hard, the pig's jaw set so tightly that his jowls seemed to shake even when he wasn't speaking. "I'm very disappointed."

Bogo sat in silence, watching the pig while a sense of utter loathing filled his chest. He had—and if the gods cursed him for it he deserved it—put the torc Cerdo had given him around the queen's neck even as she had frantically demanded that her daughter be found. And with that, Cerdo had snapped a single word—"Stop!"—and the queen had frozen in place.

She might have stayed like that, standing completely motionless, until she died of thirst had Cerdo not eventually ordered her and Bogo to sit down. The pig had spent the last few minutes pacing back and forth in the queen's carriage, his hooves working themselves into fists and then straightening back out, before finally giving Bogo another order.

"Remember everything and don't move."

And with that, Bogo had found himself in his current predicament. Although there was nothing he'd like more than to launch himself across the carriage and subdue Cerdo, he couldn't so much as twitch. He couldn't even turn his head to the side and see how the queen was holding up, although he couldn't imagine what she must be thinking.

"Do you have any idea how hard I've worked to set everything up? How close my plan is to completion?" Cerdo demanded, and Bogo would have had a few choice words for him if he could actually answer.

The pig didn't seem to be expecting a response, though, because he kept ranting without giving Bogo permission to speak. "It took me _years_ to make the few dozen special torcs I needed. _Years_. And the cost. By the gods, the _cost_! I all but bankrupted myself making them. And today, all of that was supposed to pay off. The array out there," Cerdo said, pausing briefly to gesticulate forcefully in the direction of Phoenix, "Gives me the same control as one of my torcs but works on any mammal within it. But you can't even realize the elegance of that design, can you?"

Cerdo sighed, and some of the tension seemed to drain out of him. "But listen to me," he said, uttering a chuckle that was chilling in its lack of humor, "I'm getting emotional. That's exactly the sort of thing this is all intended to avoid."

The pig clapped his hooves together briskly. "What we need now is some action. Your majesty, do you have any idea where your daughter might have gone?"

After a moment, a slight but cruel smile crossed his face. "You can speak," he said.

"I don't," the queen answered, and her voice sounded thick and husky with tears, "What are you going to do with her?"

"Do with her?" Cerdo repeated, sounding surprised, "You can't think I'm planning on killing her, can you?"

"Before today I might have said no," she answered, her voice cold.

"Then allow me to ease your mind," Cerdo replied with a smile that didn't touch his eyes, "I have no intention of killing your daughter. She's far too useful."  
"Useful?" the queen repeated, and Bogo could hear the incredulity in her voice.

"Useful, yes," Cerdo repeated, nodding his head, "It all comes back to the cycle of history. I won't live forever, you know."

"Good," Queen Lana spat.

Cerdo ignored her outburst, and continued in a lecturing tone that was horribly familiar to Bogo. "You see," he said, clasping his pudgy hoofs behind his back as he continued to pace, "The problem with revolution—with any revolution—is that the skill to run a government is quite a different one from the skill to overthrow a government. Now, I may be so bold as to say that I'm quite capable of both, but my attention is finite, after all. The problem I had to solve was one of how to ensure that generations from now, when I'm long dead, that the system runs smoothly without me. The obvious solution, of course, is for the mammal in charge of the kingdom to also be the one to see to it that things continue. That means, then, that your daughter must become mine. I can reasonably expect to live at least long enough to see to that her children are raised to do the same, and from there my system can run itself."

Although Bogo couldn't see the queen's face with his own rigidly stuck facing toward Cerdo, he supposed it must have twisted with disgust, because the pig laughed, raising his hooves in a placating gesture. "Now, now, don't get the wrong idea," he said, "I have no intention of marrying your daughter. I'll see to it she has a suitable match, one chosen to help ensure the maximum stability possible should the alchemy array surrounding Zootopia ever go down, however briefly."

"So you want to be the power behind the throne," the queen said, "Is that it?"

Cerdo's face and voice became beseeching in a way that seemed frighteningly earnest to Bogo. "No, that's not it at all. This is for the _good_ of everyone. Can't you see? Once my army rebuilds the Outer Wall into an alchemy array, every mammal in Zootopia will finally be safe. Once everyone accepts the edicts that I'll offer, there will be no more crime. No more unrest. No more petty politics. I'm not taking the city over; I'm offering it the sort of freedom it's never had."

"That'd be easier to believe if you couldn't force mammals to do whatever you want," the queen said.

Cerdo sighed. "Bogo hasn't come around either, I'm afraid," he said, "Tell her honestly what you think."

Bogo's mouth suddenly worked again, and he didn't waste the opportunity. "You're a traitor," Bogo said.

"That's a judgement for history to make, not you," Cerdo replied, sounding quite unruffled, "Had Oveja I failed to take over Zootopia, he would be remembered only as a brutal warlord who brought only death and destruction. But because he succeeded, that makes him the—"

"You're nothing like Oveja I," the queen interrupted, and Cerdo shrugged.

"You'll come around eventually," he said.

"Because you'll force me to?" the queen asked.

"I do hope it doesn't come to that," Cerdo said, "I'd prefer if the only control I exert is to prevent mammals from giving in to their darker impulses. But I don't think that'll be necessary. After all, you'll eventually realize that it's pointless to resist."

* * *

Cerdo had strode out of the carriage after his ominous pronouncement, apparently satisfied that he had the last word. Nearly the instant that the door to the carriage had clicked shut, the queen had spoken again. "Lord Bogo?" she asked.

Bogo wished he could answer, but Cerdo's control had only allowed him to answer a single question; his mouth seemed glued shut. He still couldn't move, either, no matter how he tried willing his body. After a long pause, the queen sighed. "You can't speak, I suppose," she said, "I was hoping you could tell me more about what Cerdo's doing. There _must_ be some way to stop him. There simply must."

Although he appreciated Queen Lana's optimism, Bogo found it difficult to hold onto his own hope. He still fully intended on seizing any opportunities that presented themselves, but it seemed likely that there may never be one to use. Surely, before too long, Cerdo would return and order him back into blissful obedience, making Bogo act like a puppet.

"I should have seen this coming," she continued, "But Cerdo always did have a way of escaping notice. It was always so easy to see him as being harmless. Even when the attempts on Isabel's life started, I didn't really think it could be him. I told myself I was suspecting everyone equally, but..."

The queen trailed off, and for a moment Bogo thought she wouldn't continue. When she did, her voice had softened. "I want you to know I don't blame you," she said, "If that's any comfort."

In a way, it was. Under normal circumstances, Bogo would never forget the look of shock and betrayal that had crossed the queen's face as he had grabbed her and placed Cerdo's torc around her neck. But they were in far from normal circumstances; for all he knew Cerdo would be back in minutes and order him to forget what he had seen yet again.

The investigative part of Bogo's mind latched onto that thought. It was, he realized, actually quite important. Cerdo might have the power to make him do as he pleased, and even the power to bury memories. But he didn't seem capable of erasing them; the very fact that Cerdo could order him to remember everything certainly seemed to prove it. Whether or not that would be helpful in any way Bogo had no idea, but he forced himself to hold onto the thought. "We may, however, need to revisit the idea of your retirement," the queen continued, and although the cheer in her voice was obviously false Bogo still appreciated her making the effort, "If Cerdo's right about one thing, it's about having a proper successor."

If he could have spoken, Bogo would have told her that Princess Isabel was a fine young mammal, that the queen could be satisfied knowing that she had done her best to raise a daughter who would be as capable a ruler as any that Zootopia had ever had. But he couldn't. So he listened instead, his eyes filled only with the wall of the carriage facing him. "For now, then, we'll put our faith in Princess Isabel," the queen said, "I suppose we'll see."

The queen fell silent after that, and the minutes seemed to stretch out. Unable to move so much as an inch, Bogo became aware of a maddening itch at the tip of his nose and wished desperately for the ability to scratch it. Just when it seemed that it was about to become completely unbearable, he heard the door to the carriage swing suddenly open. "Queen Lana, Lord Bogo," came Cerdo's voice, which was as cheery as Bogo had ever heard it, "In talking to the guards, I've learned that a mammal who could have only been the princess descended down into the ruins. Chasing after Commandant Totchli or Captain Nicholas, perhaps. I do want this all resolved as quickly as possible, and I can't imagine any mammals she'd trust more than the two of you."

Cerdo came into view as he walked around Bogo's back, that chilly smile still lighting up his features. "So I've decided: you're _both_ going down there."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

It's been a while for these notes, hasn't it? Well, there are some items that I did have notes for that I figured would be appropriate to cover here, after the run of three sort of interrelated chapters.

It's been established in previous chapters that incomplete philosopher's stones are a useful source of energy, and that alchemical torches are made with such imperfect stones. There have also been references to the ancients leaving behind artifacts that seemed to be designed in such a way as to require complete stones for a power source; as such I figured it made sense that Nick would find the use of a true philosopher's stone greatly increases his ability to do alchemy by taking most of the burden off of himself. It's similar to running, I suppose; you can only run at your top speed briefly before becoming too exhausted to continue running that fast. If you never got tired, you could keep up that speed indefinitely.

Nick leaving Judy's sword impaled in his chest is, in fact, exactly the right way to handle such an injury before receiving proper medical attention. If you're ever stabbed, you're better off leaving the weapon in until you can see a doctor, as removing it may cause you to bleed out faster. If you disregard that advice and remove a knife you've been stabbed with, pulling a _Kung Fu Hustle_ and putting it back in may not be the best idea, however.

The philosopher's stone, as it was used by Isabel, pretty closely aligns with the stories of such an artifact in the real world. The philosopher's stone was commonly held to be soluble in water, as demonstrated when it completely dissolves in her canteen and turns the water within into the elixir of life. The ability of the stone to transmute base metals into gold is also one of its supposed properties, as indicated by Judy's sword spontaneously transmuting into gold when splashed with the elixir. The fact that the stone was completely consumed when placed in water is also an application of my thinking for part of why philosopher's stones are rare; they don't last forever and using them eats away at them.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought!


	62. Chapter 62

Nick woke up, which was a rather refreshing surprise. As he sat up, the fact that nothing hurt made it even better. But what helped more than anything was that Judy was peering into his eyes with an expression completely devoid of hatred or murderous intent. She looked concerned, and it was almost enough to make Nick wonder if he had died after all. Then again, the gods probably didn't have such a pleasant reprieve planned for him. Not unless everything was going to be torn away from him, the way it always was.

He smiled a little at the thought, and then he couldn't help himself. Nick had gone years burying his emotions and building walls between himself and other mammals. And what, exactly, had that gotten him? A massive circle of acquaintances and contacts without so much as a single true friend. Mammals who would do things for him because they owed him a favor, not because they really cared about him. And he was, he had to admit to himself, no better than that either. Every interaction had become a transaction, buying or selling goodwill to build up a comfortable life. It was very nearly miraculous that someone had managed to see through all of that and actually love him.

And he had no intention of letting that go.

So he forgot any sort of notion of keeping himself aloof or detached and pulled Judy into a hug. She _had_ just tried to kill him, but that didn't seem to matter much. He was still alive, wasn't he? Surely it had been nothing more than the last echoes of the control Cerdo had put her under, and now she was finally back to herself.

Or perhaps not.

Judy stiffened in his embrace and pushed herself back from him. "Well, that was _weird_ ," she said, frowning as she held herself away with both paws, "I don't think I can get used to this."

"Judy—" Nick began as an uneasy sensation started flooding his gut, but she cut him off.

There was something very odd about her. It wasn't the malice toward him Cerdo had made her feel, he was sure of that. She should have seemed normal, but there was just something off about all of the little things most mammals didn't notice. Her usually perfect posture had degraded ever so slightly, and even Judy's expression didn't seem right, like a mask that didn't quite fit. But the way she spoke was strangest of all; the very cadence of her words had changed, and she seemed almost to give them the same slightly cynical edge that he did. "About that," Judy said, looking at him again, "I'm not."

Nick slowly considered the possibility that nearly dying and then somehow being brought back had affected him more than he might have guessed. There was no question, though, that he was looking at Judy. She was dressed in her uniform, the same as ever, with no torc around her neck. One of her paws was a perfect duplicate of his own in miniature, something Nick was reasonably confident no other bunny would have. Not that it seemed likely that Judy could have a twin sister who had somehow managed to find herself in the ruins under Phoenix, but stranger things had happened. Nick was at a bit of a loss to name what those stranger things would be, but still. It wasn't the sort of thing that mammals would say if it wasn't at least sometimes true. Or maybe it would be; it was Nick's experience that most mammals didn't choose their words with nearly the same care that he did.

"What?" he asked.

Perhaps that wasn't the best example of his command of the spoken language, but Nick was at a complete loss about what Judy could possibly mean. His eyes widened as a terrible possibility occurred to him. Had he somehow wiped out her memories when he had removed the torc from around her neck? It didn't seem possible, but mind-controlling torcs were a bit outside his area of expertise as an alchemist.

Judy sighed with a shrug that was awfully familiar in a way that Nick couldn't quite put a finger on. "I don't want to have to explain this again," she said, rubbing the bridge of her short muzzle before pulling her paw back, adding in a low tone, "This _really_ doesn't feel right."

Before another question could so much as form on Nick's lips Judy spoke again. "But I guess I have to. As I explained to the princess," she said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder in a manner that seemed to lack her normal deference to royalty, "I'm _not_ Judy. I'm you."

Nick had been too focused on Judy to notice before, but the princess was indeed in the same dismal tunnel that they were, sitting on a rock and looking a bit ill at ease. He blinked, the memory of seeing her face before everything went black suddenly returning with a vengeance. So that had actually happened; certainly _that_ fit as one of those stranger things. "Or at least, the copy of you that lives in here," Judy continued, tapping her forehead with one finger, "You know, the one you accidentally created during your little trick with fixing Judy's arm and don't believe could actually exist."

"I don't—"

"Your mother's name is Jada," Judy interrupted.

Nick's jaws simply hung open; he seemed to have lost the ability to speak. "Your grandparents named her that after the color of her eyes. The same color as yours."

She stopped talking, simply looking into his face intently. After a moment, she spoke again. "I can keep going, if you need me to. I know everything about you. Every secret you've never told, every thought you've kept quiet. I know it all."

And then, after an even longer pause while Nick tried to figure out what he was thinking, she added in a much cheerier tone, "But don't worry, I didn't tell Judy about any of that."

"Well that's something," Nick managed at last.

"I thought you might appreciate that," she said, and the expression on her face was one that Nick recognized from mirrors.

It was, in fact, the expression he had carefully trained himself to make until it was second nature. The one he privately thought of as his "I'm a trustworthy and good-natured fox" expression, the one that was as much of a mask as any of the others.

"Captain Nicholas?" the princess said timidly, speaking for the first time since Nick had awakened.

She stood up and walked over to where he was still sitting on the floor of the tunnel; Nick noted that her paws were stained with what was presumably his blood. "Is— is she telling the truth?"

Nick sighed as the rabbit—he couldn't think of her as Judy anymore—watched him expectantly. "It certainly looks that way," he said.

"Commandant Totchli didn't just go crazy," Nick said, and the rabbit said the words at the exact same time that he did.

The bunny grimaced just as he did as they both shot each other a look that Nick could only assume was identical based on the princess's reaction. "That's..." the princess began, and after a moment of what Nick presumed could only be some serious thinking for a polite word she finished with, "Uncanny."

"That's one way of putting it," the rabbit said, and hearing her speak alone made it even eerier how much she sounded like him.

The voice was all still Judy's, of course. The rabbit's voice hadn't changed pitch to sound like a male fox, but everything else was a copy of how he spoke. "When your, ah, mental double explained it to me while you slept I wasn't sure I could believe it," the princess said, directing her words at Nick, "But now..."

"Now the three of us need to figure out what to do next," Nick said, and he couldn't help but chuckle, "The three of us against Cerdo's conspiracy sounds like great odds."

The rabbit suddenly laughed, and Nick cocked his head to look down at her. "Is that _really_ what I look like when I do that?" she asked.

"When I do what?" Nick asked, feeling vaguely insulted.

"When I—" the rabbit began, but she fell silent when the princess coughed delicately.

"We don't have any time to waste," the princess said, and there was just a touch of her mother's unshakable authority in her voice, "Cerdo is moving to act fast."

She explained, for what Nick supposed was the second time, what she had observed that made her decide to abandon her carriage and chase after Judy. The princess didn't seem to know exactly what Cerdo was planning, but as she had correctly deduced on very little evidence that Bogo had been under Cerdo's control Nick couldn't help but be impressed. That she had figured out how to save his life with a philosopher's stone was only less impressive by comparison, but he felt no less grateful for it.

After a moment's consideration to let the details sink in, Nick said, "I have a letter from—"

"We've already read it," the rabbit interrupted, "Took it out of your pocket while you were recovering from being stabbed."

The princess pulled forth an envelope that had been stained rusty red, a somewhat apologetic expression on her face. "I _did_ watch you steal it, you know," the rabbit said before the princess could speak, "Everything Judy's seen since you created me I've seen too."

"We need a name for you," Nick said, looking down at what the princess had called his mental double with a frown, "It's hurting my brain."

"Then call me Nicholas," the rabbit said, "Kind of the opposite of what Judy was doing, but it works well enough."

She—Nicholas—shrugged, looking up into Nick's face. "It's really weird being able to watch yourself think," she—or probably he, Nick realized—observed, "Well, that and being so short with such floppy ears."

"Is... Judy still in there?" Nick asked.

It was the question he had forced himself not to ask from the moment he had heard Nicholas's crazy story, but he couldn't bear to hold himself back any longer. The slight frown that creased the face that was for the moment both Judy's and his own was far from reassuring. "Yes," Nicholas said at last, "And don't interrupt, your majesty, this is important."

The princess had indeed seemed about to say something, but at Nicholas's words closed her mouth. "Now, maybe Judy was a special case because she had me in her head. Maybe anyone else under Cerdo's control that we put in an anti-alchemy array won't react like she did. But maybe they will. You broke Judy's mind, you know. That's the only reason I'm in control now."

The tone Nicholas took wasn't harsh or accusatory, but the words still stung at Nick like barbs. Nicholas continued on, seemingly oblivious to how Nick was feeling. Or no, that wasn't quite right. Nicholas knew. He had to. But he was going to let Nick pretend that he wasn't suddenly consumed with guilt and doubt, and that made it all the harder to hear what Nicholas had to say. "I don't think you actually broke the power of Cerdo's commands when you activated the array," he said, "It's more like..."

Nicholas paused, rolling a paw thoughtfully as he groped for the right words. "Well, I can't think of a good metaphor. But it _feels_ like all you did was break Cerdo's ability to give her new commands. There's still a part of her that very much wants to capture or kill you."

The rabbit tipped his head to the side, a droll expression crossing his face. "A very significant part," he added.

Nick wasn't sure he would ever get used to thinking of Nicholas as a separate entity; his mind kept thinking of the rabbit as being Judy because her appearance actually hadn't changed so much as an iota. He definitely didn't want to get used to it, either. But the more he saw Nicholas move and talk, the less like Judy he seemed, and the easier it seemed to be to accept. "But there's also a part of her that doesn't want that," Nicholas said, "And that's where I come in."

"Cerdo was able to command her," Nicholas continued, "But his control didn't work on me. So I stayed quiet about that to Judy. I was trying to get her to start thinking for herself, to realize what Cerdo was doing and take command of her own mind again, but it wasn't working. And then when you activated your trap..."

Nicholas paused again. "I could _feel_ her mind split. It's like there's two Judys in her head now, and they're kind of blocking each other from controlling her body."

"I don't know enough about alchemy to understand that," the princess admitted, "Does that make sense to you, Captain Nicho—Captain Nick?"

Nick idly wondered if Nicholas had chosen his name just to make the princess refer to him as Nick. It seemed at least plausible; he could see himself doing the same thing if he had been in Nicholas's position. "That's kind of beyond anything I've learned," Nick said, "This is new territory."

"Probably even for Cerdo," Nicholas said, nodding his head, "But you understand what we have to do?"

The princess looked from Nick to Nicholas, and even though she seemed puzzled Nick thought she was getting a sense of what was going on. A wordless understanding was flowing between Nick and his copy, and it felt as though he could read the thoughts going on in the mind behind those brilliantly purple eyes. "Yes," Nick said at last, "I do. We need to fix Judy's mind in a way that breaks Cerdo's control. Then we need to get someone else he's controlling and see if we can free them too."

"It's not much of a fix if we just break mammals' minds trying to free them," Nicholas said agreeably, "I'm sure the princess wouldn't appreciate that."

"I would not," Princess Isabel said in a remarkably composed voice, "How do we do that?"

Nick looked down at Nicholas and then back at the princess at the very same moment that the bunny did. "I have an idea," they said together.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Nick previously suggested his mother's name as a test of whether or not the Nick in Judy's head was real or just a hallucination; as this was something he had never told Judy before it would work as a test of whether or not that Nick really did know everything that the real Nick did. Jada is a real name, derived from the precious stone Jade.

Writing what amounted to two Nicks bouncing off each other was a lot of fun for me, and something that I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I did writing.

Otherwise, I don't have too much to say about this chapter in these notes. As always, I do appreciate you reading, and if you're so inclined as to leave a comment I'd love to know what you thought!


	63. Chapter 63

Life wasn't fair.

Nick's mother had been fond of telling him that. Not unkindly, the way that some parents might when they wanted their kit to stop whining. It had been more of an observation with a certain amount of resignation to it, that in three simple words summed up a wealth of life's unfairness. The way it was unfair that, after a lifetime spent building a business, everything could come falling apart due to something outside their control. The way it was unfair that Nick's father had gotten sick. The way it was unfair that mammals could be cruel to them just because they were foxes, and any earnest plea for help just sounded like a trick to their ears.

Maybe it had helped Nick's mother, thinking of life like that. That if she didn't expect things to always work out, she wouldn't be disappointed. Bad things happened to good mammals and good things happened to bad ones, and if there was any reward for a lifetime of suffering or a punishment for a life of unearned gains only the gods knew it. Life wasn't fair. It was cynical and perhaps a touch pessimistic, but it helped remembering what she had said.

But she wasn't his mother.

Nicholas couldn't help but be a touch envious of Nick. If he was honest with himself, a lot envious of him. So far as he could tell, it was like a flip of a coin, which one of them was real and which one of them was not. He had all of Nick's memories, after all. Everything that made him who he was, everything that defined him as a mammal, was a part of him. It felt as though there had been a transition, as if in that terrible instant when Judy had been dying and he had been desperate to save her, that he had somehow ended up in her head.

But that wasn't true, was it? _Nick_ had saved her. _Nick_ was still out there, a living, breathing mammal with his own identity. Whereas Nicholas had become something even less than a ghost. He had done his best to accept it with good grace, though. He had spared Judy his panic as the enormity of what he was, of what he had become, occurred to him. For her sake, he had even acted as though he was fine with being a ghostly presence.

Nicholas was a pretty good actor.

But there were some things that hadn't been an act. He did care about Judy, and he told himself that he cared no less than Nick did. Maybe even more; Nick would never know the things that he did. Being inside Judy's head had been to know her in a way that was surely impossible for Nick. It was as though the inside of her head was a vast building, a castle with an infinite number of rooms and twice as many doors. That seemed vaguely impossible, but that was the way it felt, and as a being entirely without a body how things felt was also their reality. Nicholas had done his best not to peek—he was aware, in some dim way, that there were doors it was best not to look behind—but he had still gotten what seemed like a truer sense of Judy than Nick ever had.

It wasn't that he could read her thoughts the way he could read words on a page; that would have been as impossible to see as the individual components that made up a river. But he could see the shape of them in a way that didn't have anything to do with vision. The character of them, the content of them, had all been Judy in a way Nicholas couldn't describe. Her sort of essential goodness had been there for him to experience, and it had warmed him like the sun on his face.

Or at least, like the memory of the sun on Nick's face. But the memory was just as much his as it was Nick's, and it felt like the right way to think of it. Judy wasn't perfect inside her head any more than she was outside it looking in. She was no less lovely for it, though, and it had broken the heart that Nicholas didn't have when Cerdo had changed her.

The castle that was her mind had seemed to shift and twist around him as Cerdo's commands took hold, some doors turning into blank walls as rooms and corridors fought with themselves. Passages had closed as new ones opened, and there had been an unnatural _wrongness_ to it. Were Judy's mind really a castle, Nicholas supposed that it would have been impossible to see the change all at once from any point inside it, but that was the power of a metaphor, wasn't it? It wasn't as though anyone else would ever understand what he knew.

To him, from his perspective, the changes Cerdo had made were appalling in their crudeness, as though an untrained but enthusiastic stonemason had taken over from a master. There was a coarseness and roughness to how her love for Nick had been turned into hatred, and it was filled with gaps. After all, her feelings for him had been completely unaffected.

That had been something of a comfort, and he had done what he could for her even as she carried out her task of hunting Nick down. He had tried warning her when he saw Nick's trap, but there had been something selfish to that too, if he was honest with himself. He had been afraid that an anti-alchemy array really would kill him, and as pathetic as his version of life was, he hadn't wanted it to end.

Not before freeing Judy.

But then, as the array turned on, Nicholas had felt her mind change again. But it hadn't been like the clumsy changes Cerdo had done. Those had been like bricking over hallways and knocking new doorways into walls. What Nick had done was as though a cataclysmic earthquake had struck a building and split it in half, tearing apart its foundation and tearing walls asunder with no care for what happened. It was a small wonder that Judy had been completely unresponsive ever since, considering the crumbling ruins that her mind had become. And for Nicholas, it seemed as though the gods had answered his most selfish desire. He had a body, one that gave him everything he had lacked ever since his peculiar existence had started.

Of course, the fact that it was _Judy's_ body made him think the gods were having a joke at his expense.

Everything felt dreadfully wrong; there were just too many things that were too different from how Nick's memories told him they should be. Her eyes were surprisingly weak, as was her nose. Nicholas had to draw on Nick's memories of being much younger to recall being as short as Judy stood as a fully-grown adult, and her long ears were almost painfully sensitive. One paw, at least, felt almost exactly the way that it should, but the other was much too soft and completely lacked paw pads.

And those were just the differences between a fox and a rabbit; Nicholas had deliberately avoided considering the other major way in which he and her differed. The temptation to take her body as his own simply wasn't there; he thought of himself as more of a short-term tenant. Would Nick have been so noble in his place?

Well, probably. Nicholas had to admit that to himself. The very fact that they had an uncanny knack for saying the exact same thing at the exact same time meant they were probably more alike than they were different. But they clearly didn't always think the same thing, because even though they had both spoken up about having an idea, those ideas couldn't have been more different.

They had both arrived at the same conclusion: they needed to first fix Judys's sundered mind and free her from Cerdo's control before they tried to stop him. Otherwise, they'd probably break the minds of many more mammals. From there, though, they had gone in entirely different directions.

Nicholas listened politely as Nick laid out his idea, which was rather strange to listen to. He knew he was—or at least he remembered he was—capable of being quite persuasive, but hearing his own methods used against him was oddly unsettling. Nick's idea was, Nicholas had to admit, a sure sign of how much the fox cared about Judy. He didn't dare try anything that might try tinkering with her mind until he knew more about what Cerdo had done, so he proposed sending Nicholas back to Cerdo with one of the fake bits of corpse he had created. From there, Nicholas, who of course looked exactly like Judy, would be able to gather more information as Nick and the princess stayed hidden in the ruins under Phoenix, preparing more anti-alchemy arrays that could be activated once they had the additional knowledge of how to tweak them to prevent mental damage.

Nicholas could see that the princess was strongly considering Nick's idea, and he repressed a sigh. It was far from a terrible plan, but for Judy's sake he needed to be more convincing.

"It won't work," Nicholas said bluntly.

That was a trick he had a lot of memories of. Rightly or wrongly—well, perhaps mostly wrongly—what mammals responded most strongly to wasn't the logic of an idea but the confidence with which it was spoken. Nick had been confident indeed, and now Nicholas was going to have to tear it all down. Before Nick could respond, Nicholas continued, "We could make a fake torc for me to wear, but it won't fool Cerdo. The instant he tries to give Judy a command, he'll know it's not working."

Nick deflated ever so slightly, the change so imperceptible that Nicholas doubted anyone else could have noticed it. The princess's reaction was much more apparent, a frown creasing her features. "Are you sure?" she asked, and Nicholas found himself profoundly grateful for the opening she had given him.

"Yes," he said, doing his best to fill the word with as much confidence as possible.

It was very weird to do so in Judy's voice, but he did his best all the same. "There's a sort of response whenever he gives a command. I could feel it when he was giving Judy orders, and it's not going to be there."

"You don't know that," Nick protested, "Judy's mind might not be—"

"You're not in Judy's head," Nicholas said, cutting him off, "I am. Believe me, your majesty. It won't work."

Turning from Nick to the princess to make his plea was something of a low blow, but she was the one he had to convince. Nicholas hesitated a moment before continuing. The mistake a lot of mammals made, when they tried to convince someone else, was over-committing to their attempts at persuasion. Coming off as being too aggressive was off-putting, and as a fox Nick had always needed to be careful. Of course, for the moment Nicholas was a rabbit, but he hoped his appearance wouldn't change too much. "Yes," Nicholas said, making his voice gentler—that, at least, was easier in Judy's body—"It's possible that Cerdo won't issue any more orders if I give him some convincing evidence that Nick is dead. But those aren't good odds. We don't know how many mammals he completely controls. Maybe it's just Bogo and a few others. And if Commandant Totchli is one of the only mammals he controls, he's going to have more for her to do."

That was almost complete conjecture, and while it sounded good it wasn't on the firmest of grounds. Still, by the way that the princess nodded slowly Nicholas could see that she wastaking the point seriously. "Then what do you want us to do?" Nick asked, "Hide down here forever?"

He was very good, Nicholas had to admit. He hadn't allowed any of his frustration seep into his voice; he had given the words the perfect half-joking tinge to make them cut more sharply. The princess was going to want to take action, any action, and if Nicholas couldn't sell his idea well enough he knew she'd go with Nick's gamble. "As charming as these tunnels are, no," Nicholas said, putting in what he hoped was just the right touch of levity, "Especially because it's only a matter of time before the City Guard comes down here looking for the princess. Now, maybe they won't be under Cerdo's control and she can convince them not to drag her back to him. Maybe they will. For all we know, they'll kill her on sight."

Nicholas resisted the urge to glance at the princess to see if his words were having the desired effect. He wanted her to be a little afraid, but not so afraid that she'd do something reckless to prove that she wasn't. That was the mistake too many mammals Nick had dealt with over the years had made; when their idea of who they were was challenged they couldn't resist the compulsion to prove themselves. "So we do have to move, and we need to move fast. All three of us need to go back up to the surface together."

"But you said it was too dangerous for you to go to Cerdo," the princess protested.

Nick had resisted taking the bait, but the princess hadn't. Nicholas felt a rather pleasant wave of satisfaction as he drove his point home. "It's too dangerous to go to him when we're still trying to figure things out," he said, "We need to go to him ready to stop him once and for all."

The effect of his words might have been ruined a bit, considering that he was currently a bunny shorter than the princess, but he knew that they had to have some appeal. "I'm exactly as good at alchemy as _you_ are," Nick said, folding his arms across his chest, "And if I have no idea how to fix Judy's mind, neither do you."

"That's not actually true," Nicholas said, "Cerdo did say something after you jumped off the cliff. I didn't realize what it meant at the time, but now..."

Nicholas had reached the most dangerous part of his idea, and for one simple reason that had nothing to do with how persuasive he made himself. It wasn't a matter of couching the truth in the most effective manner anymore. "Now I know what I have to do," he finished simply.

He was lying.

Nick was very good at lying, though, and Nicholas thought he had to be at least his originator's equal. Nicholas had nothing more than a vague idea, but neither Nick nor the princess could possibly feel the urgency of the need to address Judy's broken mind in the way that he did. "What's that?" the princess asked, her voice betraying her eagerness.

"The torc Commandant Totchli was wearing," Nicholas said, "I can use it to reach into her mind and pull it back together. Then we'll all be ready to go back and confront Cerdo."

That, too, was a lie. Or at least, it felt like one. Nicholas meant to repair Judy's mind, and he even thought that he knew how to do it before it crumbled too much for anyone to do anything about it.

But he didn't think that he'd survive the attempt.


	64. Chapter 64

Judy was too afraid to even look at the door.

She had pulled it shut after herself as she fled something indescribably awful, something that had sent fear coursing through her veins like nothing ever had before. She had trembled, sick with it, as her heart pounded madly in her chest and she cowered on the floor with her paws clutched over her ears. How long it had taken between her mad dash to escape and when she had finally dared to look up? It might have been minutes. Or hours.

Maybe even days.

There was something dreadfully wrong with her, that much she knew for certain. Judy had never been so afraid in her life, so paralyzed with it. But she was supposed to be brave, wasn't she? Nick had told her she was the bravest mammal he had ever met, and he wouldn't lie to her about something like that.

"I'm not afraid," she whispered, her voice cracking.

"I'm not afraid," Judy repeated, "I'm not afraid."

But no matter how she repeated the words, she couldn't believe them. Judy cast back in her memory, searching for something she could hold onto. Even her memories seemed to have abandoned her, no matter how hard she tried to pull up some example of courage. Thinking of the Ehecatls she had fought off when they had attacked Nick only sent a thrill of horror down her spine. She had nearly died, for the gods' sake, and it seemed impossible to imagine she had actually stood tall in that dark tunnel and fought the monsters off.

Where had that courage gone? It was easier to imagine that it wasn't her who had done it, that there had been someone stronger than her in every way. She couldn't even remember what had happened after saving Nick, which only added to the feeling. The idea tickled at Judy's mind, and the sense of missing something threatened to overwhelm her. It was a gap like a lost tooth or a fragment of a song that refused to either leave or resolve itself into something sensible. Frustration, not courage, was what finally made her look up, and as it dawned on her where she was Judy almost forgot her fear.

Almost, but not quite.

Still, there was no denying the wonder that washed over her; she was in a room that she knew very well. It was where she had spent every night before heading off to the academy. It was, in fact, her bedroom in her parents' modest barony holding. It was the sort of room that the wealthier scions of noble families she had gone through officer training with would have sneered at, but it was utterly unmistakable. The ceiling was low, but cozily so, compared to how grandly vaulted the rooms of the academy were. There was no marble or obsidian to make up the floor in carefully laid tile; there were only the familiar weathered wooden planks worn to a mellow and golden color. The scratches and whorls in the wood were all exactly as she remembered them; there was the knot in one of the corners that vaguely resembled a well and the gouge near the bed where she had once dropped a practice sword. The bed itself was there too, as it surely had to be, because although it was not extravagantly large it was still ever so slightly wider than the door frame. The desk at its side, its surface stained with the ghostly remnants of ink that had gone somewhat awry as Judy had practiced her letters and numbers, was just as it should be. When Judy reached up, quite hesitantly, from where she remained on the floor, the chair at the desk even wobbled slightly on its legs as she remembered it doing.

The walls of the room, neatly worked out of large stone blocks (there were one hundred and thirty-two blocks; Judy had counted them once when she had been no more than eight or nine and had never forgotten the number) had their alchemical torches in modest fixtures providing a warm glow that suffused the room. But as Judy finally stood, she realized that there was something wrong.

She still didn't dare look at the wall with the door in it, the door which had so far held the monster chasing her at bay without so much as the sound of a rattle or scrape. But the wall opposite it, where there should have been a narrow window with its pleasant view of the east fields, was blank. Or almost blank, rather.

A large crack ran through the blocks that Judy couldn't remember having ever seen before, nearly as long as she was tall and taking an irregularly diagonal course. But it didn't look as though the window had been inexpertly bricked over; it looked as though there had never been a window at all. Judy put both her paws against the cold stone, but it felt so unarguably solid that she would have pulled back if something new hadn't started gnawing at her mind.

The backs of both her paws were the same shade of gray, only slightly lighter than the walls themselves. But that wasn't right, was it? Judy turned her paws over, half-expecting to see something on her palms, but they both looked as they always had: smoothly furred and brightly white. Judy frowned as she wriggled her fingers, trying to recall what was supposed to be different about her paws. There was _something_ but it seemed to dance right out of her ability to reach. There had been...

Judy's thoughts trailed off as a better question occurred to her. Why was she back in her room in Totchli Barony? Or rather, something that _looked_ like her room, because the longer she stood there the less possible it seemed. The walls of the seat of the barony were thick stone, it was true, but her ears were quite sensitive. There should have been some sound, some indication of the little world that it had been as she grew up. But there were no wails or laughs of kits coming from distant rooms or hallways. There was no smell of food cooking coming from the vast kitchen that had been only a floor beneath her room, and there wasn't so much as the slightest hint of anyone else being near her.

 _But the monster!_

Judy's heart started pounding again, the memory of her pursuer suddenly bright and vivid again. She had scurried down the hallway, not daring to look back over her shoulder to see how close it was to snagging her by the neck, and then—

"What about before that?"

Judy asked the question so suddenly she hadn't even realized she was going to speak until the words were out of her mouth. Her voice wasn't steady—it felt as though perhaps she would never be steady again—but it was something to focus on other than the crawling fear spreading from the pit of her stomach and wrapping itself around her heart. There had been a monster. And it _had_ chased her through what were almost the familiar corridors of her ancestral home. But how had it come to that?

Desperately but futilely trying to push the fear aside, Judy tried casting her memory back. For a moment, she couldn't picture what had come before the monster that had chased her, and then suddenly she could.

 _I stabbed Nick._

Judy fell back to the floor, clutching her muzzle in silent horror. She didn't know why she had done it, but there was no denying the memory, which felt horribly sharp and vivid. Judy could see the look of shock that had crossed his face as the tip of her sword had gone home in his chest as though he was there in front of her, and she couldn't help the tears that streamed down her face.

What little strength she had felt as though it was leaving her along with the tears, which ran hotly over her fingers and to the floor. "I killed him," she said, and the words felt dreadfully true, "I did."

Judy sat dully on the floor, her back to the door and the awful things it seemed to promise even without being able to see it, and wept until she had no more tears to cry. Very little seemed to matter anymore; her desire to puzzle out the mystery she had found herself in had fizzled out. What else might she remember if she pushed too hard? How else had she hurt Nick? The fear of it loomed large in her heart, and she felt as though she might have stayed where she sat forever when suddenly something happened.

There was a knock at the door.

Judy froze, her back suddenly rigid and her ears snapping upright and turning toward the source of the sound. She didn't dare move an inch, her eyes going wide. The monster chasing her had come back for her, she realized. Had come back and wanted to end things. Judy barely even breathed although her heart was beating so fast that her vision seemed to pulse with color at its edges, and she said a silent prayer that the monster would move on.

The knock came again, more urgently.

And still, Judy couldn't act. Fear burned through her, paralyzing her, and every second that passed was an exquisite agony. But then the absolute last thing she expected to hear came from the other side of the door. "Judy?" a voice asked.

But it wasn't just a voice. It was _his_ voice, cautious but still wonderfully vivid. It was Nick.

 _Unless it's a trap._

The greeting Judy had been about to call out died suddenly on her lips. Was the monster chasing her trying to fool her? But Nick's voice came again, a bit more persistently. "Judy, please, I know you're in there."

"You're dead!" Judy blurted suddenly, "I killed you."

"Well, it didn't quite stick," Nick replied, his words almost cheerful, "I'm fine. Just open the door and you can see for yourself."

"I— I can't," Judy called out, "There's— there's something out there."

"I know," Nick's voice came back, "I know. And I need your help to stop it."

Judy's fear warred with her love of him, and she felt horribly ashamed at her reply. "I can't help you."

Nick's chuckle was somehow happy and sad at the same time. "Darling," he drawled, and the way he stretched out the word made her smile a little, "You're the only one who can help me."

"I'm scared."

Judy had said the words so quietly that she thought he might not have heard them. She almost hoped that he hadn't. "I'm scared too," he said, "You— I broke your mind. But I can't put the pieces back together without you."

What he said shouldn't have made any sense whatsoever. Minds were not like plates that could be dropped and shattered, after all. And yet, at his words, something else about the memory of stabbing him came to her. There had been a savage sense of _rightness_ to the act that had disappeared the moment the blade had sunk into his flesh. But that wasn't quite right. It hadn't vanished; it had suddenly needed to coexist with a horrible sense of remorse.

And then those two feelings had gotten stronger and stronger, each seeming to fight with the other, and it was as though her mind was being torn into two pieces. Judy remembered clawing at her face, as though it could somehow free the thoughts from her head and then—

And then she had been running down the halls of her parents' home, chased by something hot on her heels and hungering to catch her.

"This— I—" Judy sputtered, her thoughts running wildly in no kind of order.

"I know, it's a bit much to take in," Nick said, "So open the door. Please. Let me help you."

Judy turned slowly, and the door loomed in front of her. It was almost sinister in how innocuous it looked, just a standard wooden door lacking any sort of decoration. Judy stood up and walked toward it, and it seemed to yawn into infinity, each of her steps bringing her no closer to the worn brass knob with a gleaming latch above it. She reached out all the same, and the bright bit of metal was strangely warm to the touch.

Judy pulled her fingers away as though it had burned her. "I can't," she said, shaking her head even though Nick couldn't see her, "I'm sorry, but I can't."

"You can," Nick's voice came back, warm and kind and without the slightest hint of his usual cynical air, "I know you can. You're the bravest mammal I've ever met. I meant it when I said that to you the first time, you know."

"You don't understand," Judy said, "I'm not—"

She broke off, feeling more ashamed than ever. She could almost feel Nick's eyes on the other side of the door, but he didn't speak, letting her marshal her thoughts together. "I'm not brave anymore," she said.

"Because you're afraid?" Nick asked mildly.

Judy nodded before she remembered that the gesture was meaningless with the solid barrier between them. "Yes," she said, her voice low, "It's like— It's like there's a piece of me missing."

"There is," Nick said, "And I can help you get it back. But I need you to open the door first."

Judy reached out again, letting her fingers close over the latch. "But what if—" she began, but Nick cut her off.

"Carrots," he said, "Please."

She paused, the warm piece of metal in her paw seeming almost to pulse with the beating of her heart. "I love you, Judy," he said.

Judy turned the latch and immediately covered her face with her paws. Maybe she had just allowed the beast pursuing her into her sanctuary and she was about to be devoured. The Ehecatls had spoken in Nick's voice, after all; had she been so foolish as to invite her own death in?

But when the door creaked open and she heard someone walk in, it was only Nick's familiar footsteps. And then he was suddenly hugging her and Judy couldn't resist hugging him back, her eyes flying open to take in her fox.

He was there, wonderfully real and apparently completely uninjured. He smiled down at her as she nestled herself against his chest, and it turned out that she hadn't cried all of her tears after all. Her love for him seemed overwhelming, and suddenly the fear she had felt didn't seem quite so unmanageable after all. "Nick," she said, "I'm sorry I—"

She couldn't finish. He didn't seem to need her to, and he let her weep against his chest without comment until she had finally regained control of herself. "What happened?" she asked when at last she could speak again.

Her words were still a bit thickened with tears, but Nick seemed to have no trouble understanding her. "It'll be easier to show you," he said.

Mercifully, he didn't head back for the door—even the thought of crossing it was terrifying—but toward the crack in the wall opposite it. "We're not _really_ in... well, whatever castle this is," he said.

"This is Totchli Barony," Judy said, and Nick looked around, suddenly seeming much more interested in the surroundings.

"So this is where you grew up?" he asked, "I'm glad I got to see it before I go."

Judy frowned. "Go where?" she asked.

"Oh, don't worry," Nick said with an airy wave of one paw, "I'll be by your side when you wake up."

"Wake up?"

He seemed to be about two or three thoughts ahead of her, and his words didn't quite make sense. "I'm not explaining this very well," Nick said, appearing somewhat chagrined, "So let's cut to the chase."

He placed both paws on either side of the crack in the wall, and something very odd happened. Nick briefly seemed to become insubstantial, but it wasn't as though Judy was suddenly able to see through him as though he was a sheet of frosted glass. Rather, he seemed almost to unwind, like a ball of yarn unraveling, before becoming solid again. The result on the wall was far less dramatic; the crack running through it simply vanished without any fanfare.

But at the instant the crack vanished, something seemed to click into place in Judy's mind and she suddenly remembered what was wrong about her paws. Her left paw, which she held up before her face, looked like a mirror image of her right, as it had for most of her life. But it wasn't supposed to look that way; the rest of her encounter with the Ehecatls suddenly snapped back into place. And with it, she thought she understood what Nick had been trying to get at.

"This is inside my head?" Judy asked in wonder as she spun around, taking in the room with a new interest.

"Something like that," Nick said; he was smiling but in a rather tired way, "I've been patching up the cracks. But there's something only you can fix."

"I don't understand," Judy said, her eyes involuntarily flickering toward the door; she prayed he wasn't going to ask her to leave.

"You said you felt like there was a piece of you missing," Nick said, "And you're right. There is. It's running around in here and you need to get it back under control."

It took Judy a moment for the impact of Nick's words to sink in, and then the inescapable conclusion hit her. "You mean the monster that's—"

"It's not a monster," Nick interrupted quickly, "Just another piece of you. Your courage, from the sounds of it. Probably some other stuff too. I'm not exactly sure; I've been playing this by ear."

Judy gaped at him for a moment. "You mean I—"

"We," Nick interrupted, "I'll be at your side."

"We need to stop the part of me that's _good_ at fighting? Nick, we can't do it."

"We can," Nick said.

"But—" Judy sputtered, "But it's not _fair!_ "

She knew she probably sounded like a petulant kit, but she couldn't help herself. That part of her that was missing had terrified her as it chased her; the thought of going after it knowing what it was made it somehow even more frightening. "I know," Nick said, "I've been thinking about that a lot lately, actually. Life just isn't fair."

And then, to her great surprise, he tapped her gently on the nose with one finger. "But as long as I've got you, it's been unfair in my favor."

Judy sighed, glancing at the door again. What was beyond it was still frightening, but she supposed there wasn't much choice. "So what do we do?"


	65. Chapter 65

The first time Nick had carried Judy, it had been as venom burned through her body. He had barely noticed the burden then, he had been so focused on trying to keep her conscious and just getting far enough outside the anti-alchemy array that the Nopalayotl had created. But carrying her for the second time, it occurred to him that she really didn't weigh very much.

He had her head resting against his chest, delicately cradling it with one paw as he supported her legs with the other. It was almost like he was carrying a kit, and the similarity didn't end with just the way in which he held her. Like a very young kit, she didn't seem capable of supporting her own head, which bobbled against his paw with each of his steps.

That was worrying.

Even when Judy had been dying from the Ehecatl's bite, she had at least been _aware._ Barely, it was true, and watching the life drain slowly out of her had been horrifying. But she had still been aware nonetheless, capable of answering his questions and following the thread of the story he had told her. Now, though, she was completely limp and non-responsive. Externally, at least; she was fighting a battle for her mind on the inside.

Or so the copy of Nick's own mind had claimed. He still wasn't comfortable with _that_ idea, but he knew when he had been outmaneuvered and the princess had thrown her support behind the plan his copy had proposed. The princess, Nick strongly suspected, liked Judy a lot more than she did him. Which was, he told himself, not a failure of his own remarkable charms or even the sort of anti-fox bias that a lot of mammals harbored.

It was that Judy was good in a way that he wasn't.

Maybe Judy would have scolded him for getting down on himself, had she been able to say anything and if he had spoken the thought aloud in the first place. As uncomfortable an idea it was that a copy of his mind was in Judy's head he didn't dare consider what it would be like to have a copy of her in his own. But his musings were just distractions from what he was really concerned about; Nick knew himself that well. It was, perhaps, the first lesson of being good at selling things: always be honest with yourself. Being honest with customers wasn't strictly necessary; his own parents' experience had taught him that. Years of running a scrupulously fair shop hadn't saved it when his father had gotten sick.

But he was doing it again.

Nick forced his gloomy distractions aside and thought about what was actually important. Namely, the rabbit he was holding as carefully he could as he and the princess tried putting as much distance between themselves and the crevasse outside Phoenix. Nicholas and Judy were otherwise occupied, the philosopher's stone that they had pried free of Judy's torc clutched tightly in her paw. That, at least, Nick tried to take as a good sign. Even as her head bounced freely and her feet swung against his chest, her right paw remained tightly clenched with only the faintest hint of a brilliant light emerging from between her fingers.

Considering that Nicholas was theoretically exactly as good at alchemy as Nick himself was, Nick had instantly grasped what his mental duplicate intended to do when he claimed that another transmutation was the only way to save Judy's mind. Healing Judy's arm through alchemy had been how the mental copy had been created, after all, and if that could noticeably impact her mind then surely another transmutation could do the same.

That was the theory, at least. Nick was more than a little skeptical of it; in his mind it was a bit like claiming that since a match could create fires that it must also be able to put them out. Maybe it would work—and he fervently hope that it would—but maybe it wouldn't. If he was honest with himself, though, he would have felt more confident about Judy's odds of recovery if she had been doing it alone. It wasn't that he doubted that Nicholas was a copy of himself or thought that he had some kind of ulterior motive. Nicholas's undeniable knowledge of things he had never told Judy, and the easy way he had extracted the philosopher's stone from Judy's torc had put any of those concerns to bed. It was, Nick had to admit, much simpler than that.

He didn't trust himself.

That was what it all came down to, really. Nicholas was, it seemed, a perfect copy of his own mind, and that meant he had all the same weaknesses. And those, Nick knew, were numerous. If push came to shove, would Nicholas save Judy or himself? Nick liked to believe that, if he had been in Nicholas's position, the answer would have been yes. Yes, without any kind of caveats or any amount of hedging. If saving Judy meant that he himself would die, Nick believed he would do it.

But was he lying to himself?

His own track record for doing the right thing wasn't exactly encouraging. And worst of all, there was absolutely nothing he could do. Since Nicholas had clutched the philosopher's stone and started a transmutation, going limp as he did, it had been almost four hours. Although Nick had paid attention to Judy's body as carefully as he could while still navigating the tunnels of the ruins under Phoenix, he hadn't seen a single sign of improvement. Not that he had any idea how long repairing Judy's mind would take. Or even if it was possible.

Nick heaved a sigh; no wonder other mammals so frequently didn't enjoy his company. He was getting irritated with Nicholas, which seemed to amount to being irritated with himself. Why couldn't he have been a better mammal so his copy would be, too?

"Is something wrong?"

Nick snapped his head to the side, taking in the princess's anxious face. She had spoken the words timidly, but they had completely cut through his concentration. For a princess, she seemed to shrink into the background more than he would have thought a royal was even capable of doing. Just about every noble it had been his misfortune to deal with had been full of the overwhelming need to make themselves the center of attention in as ostentatious a manner as was possible. But then, that wasn't quite fair. Judy was a noble, after all, even if she was a rather minor one.

Nick shot the princess an easy smile; he supposed he could have been on his deathbed and still managed the same. He had practiced it until it was second nature, as it kind of defeated the purpose of having a disarming smile if he couldn't call upon it whenever he needed it. "Just thinking," he said.

"What about you?" he added, "You've been quiet, your highness."

That was the unvarnished truth and not just a deflection; the princess had barely spoken a word in hours. Actually, unless Nick had been too deep in his own thoughts to notice her speaking—and he hoped he hadn't as being rude to a princess didn't seem like a good idea—she hadn't spoken at all as they plunged deeper and deeper into the tunnels. "Just thinking," she said, echoing his words.

Nick made a noncommittal noise of agreement and fell silent as they keep walking. She'd speak again, he knew. Some merchants spoke too much, filling the air with so many words that their clients got uncomfortable and left. Letting their clients be the ones to speak worked better, in his experience; pushing too hard would just make them decide against talking.

"I'm worried about my mother," the princess said abruptly, after a minute or two had passed with nothing interesting to see in the unremarkable corridor they were traveling down.

"I would be too, if I were in your place and it was my mother up there," Nick said.

The princess looked at him a bit oddly at that, as if it was occurring to her for the first time that foxes didn't simply spring into existence out of thin air. But then, that was the burden of the crown, Nick supposed. It was probably easier to think of a kingdom's subjects as just a sort of abstract concept rather than consider that each and every one of them had a mother and a father and their own hopes and dreams and fears. "It's just..." the princess began, and she paused, licking her lips.

Nick was happy to fall silent again, feeling the gentle rise and fall of Judy's chest against his own as she breathed slowly and evenly. "Why wasn't Cerdo after _her_?" Princess Isabel said at last.

That was a good question, and Nick considered it for a moment. Part of it was him wondering whether or not the princess was being rhetorical, and when he noticed she was looking at him expectantly he answered carefully. "Maybe he underestimated you," Nick said.

"Underestimated me?" the princess repeated.

She didn't sound quite skeptical, but rather as though she wanted to believe that his words were true but didn't quite see how. "Sure," Nick said, "He might be underestimating you. You're young, you're a chimera... Maybe he didn't think much of you."

"I can't help being young or a chimera!" the princess said, with surprising heat in her voice.

"Of course you can't," Nick said, and he would have raised his paws in a placating manner if he hadn't been holding Judy, "You can't change what you are. You can take advantage of it, though."

The princess fell silent again for a moment before speaking. "How do you do it?" she asked.

Nick chuckled. "Take advantage of being a fox?" he asked, "That's easy. Mammals expect me to try tricking them."

The princess frowned. "That doesn't seem like it'd be easy to take advantage of."

Nick shrugged carefully, making sure not to disturb Judy's still form. "The trick is making them think _they're_ taking advantage of _me._ Make them think they're clever enough to see through a fox's trick and they'll be satisfied with whatever we agree to."

"Even if it's in your favor?"

" _Especially_ if it's in my favor," Nick said, nodding.

"That's... Not too different from something my mother told me once," the princess said.

"I imagine it's a bit different if you're a queen, your majesty," Nick said agreeably, "But the principle's the same."

Neither one of them spoke for a long while after that, but Nick couldn't help but hope that he had been able to give the princess some comfort. Considering that, for the moment, she was the only company he had capable of holding a conversation—unless he got so desperate he tried puppeteering Judy's jaw and imitating her voice—he'd much rather they get along.

Also, the princess had a sword and his arms were full.

Still, the silence seemed positively companionable as they continued along, the tunnels slowly rising. Nick's unerring sense of direction—which was, he supposed, one of those other advantages of being a fox—told him they were headed toward Phoenix itself, which was exactly what they wanted. Cerdo clearly wanted something out of the settlement, and it was as good a place as any to set up an anti-alchemy array once Nicholas was done fixing Judy's mind and they were sure they wouldn't just make things worse.

But then Nick saw something that absolutely did not belong in the murky ruins under Phoenix and came to stop so suddenly that the princess walked a few more steps before noticing. "Captain Nick?" she asked, "What is it?"

Lacking any free paws with which to gesture, Nick jerked his chin toward where something was glowing off in the distance. "That's not an alchemical torch," he said, frowning.

Alchemical torches, at least, he could have understood. The long-dead builders of Quimichpatlan Barony had filled the place with all sorts of light sources, and although the calamity that had destroyed the underground city had ruined many of them—and generations of looters had removed most of the ones that remained—they were far from an unexpected sight. But what Nick had spotted didn't glow with the discolored and dim light of an ancient torch or the brighter and harsher glow of an unfiltered modern one. The light was, in fact, the same beautiful crimson color that the philosopher's stone clenched in Judy's fist was.

"Let me go first," the princess whispered, raising her sword and peering cautiously into the darkness.

Considering he was still holding Judy's inert form in his paws, Nick was happy to let her investigate. It wasn't as though he could do much otherwise; dropping Judy to draw a weapon or prepare to perform a transmutation didn't seem like a very good idea. He watched, straining his eyes against the darkness, as the princess slowly advanced toward that reddish glow. She stood, seemingly transfixed for a long while, and then motioned with her free arm for Nick to come to her. A bit uneasily, he did, and when he got closer he couldn't help but be amazed at what he saw.

There, carved into the floor of the tunnels underneath Phoenix was a segment of an alchemical array of incredible complexity; it made anything he had ever made look positively simple by comparison. Nick couldn't even tell how large the full array was; the visible segment was more than twenty feet long and nearly a foot wide, and it only disappeared from sight when it went behind walls. Elaborate curls and words wound their way through unusual patterns, all of them pulsing with that red light, and there was something oddly familiar about them.

And then it struck him where he had seen something similar. It was like the array etched into the torc Judy had been wearing, the one that had allowed Cerdo to control her mind. His mind all but reeling at the insight, the pieces fell into place for Nick. What he was looking at was something intended to exert control over a huge number of mammals all at once. And, from the mild curvature of the array, he suddenly realized that it could only be intended to cover all of Phoenix. "Don't cross the line," Nick said more sharply than he had intended as he looked to the princess, "This is how Cerdo got the mammals in Phoenix to do what he wanted."

The princess gaped at him for a moment, but then realization brightened her face. "And you and Commandant Totchli weren't affected because you were in an anti-alchemy cell!"

Nick nodded, his mind still racing. "If Cerdo can use this to _control_ mammals," he began slowly, but the princess interrupted him.

"You could change it to free them?" she asked, her excitement evident in her voice and across her face.

"Maybe," Nick said, and he gently shifted Judy in his arms, "But..."

The princess took a long look at Judy's still motionless form and swallowed hard. He could tell she was thinking the same thing he was. Maybe breaking the circle would be enough. Maybe it wouldn't. Maybe it would all but kill the mammals currently in Phoenix above them, if there were any. "I..." the princess began, and she stopped before beginning again.

"I don't know what to do," she said softly.

"I think there's only one thing we _can_ do," Nick said, as he looked down into Judy's face.

He desperately wanted to know what was going on in that little bunny brain of hers. Had Nicholas failed? Did he just need more time? "We wait," he said simply, and the princess nodded.


	66. Chapter 66

Bogo had raised a daughter of his own, and although he would never admit it to the queen he oftentimes saw the princess in the same way. Not that he would have ever claimed to be a father figure to her, but he supposed that whether a child's parents were a teacher and a guardsmammal or a queen and a prince consort that the challenges of parenthood were not unique. Everyone, from commoners to royalty, would see their children learn to walk. Learn to talk. Watch them grow taller and stronger and wiser.

And, of course, watch them make abysmally foolish decisions.

Bogo wasn't quite sure what had possessed the princess to run off into the ruins under Phoenix—she was not stupid by any means—but his worry felt as sharp as the time a messenger had burst into the guard post to let him know his daughter had jumped out of a window with a blanket, thinking it would let her fly. She had only been five at the time, which Bogo supposed was young enough to come up with the idea but not old enough to realize how bad it was. Although it had resulted in nothing worse than a broken arm, Maria had been beside herself with worry, blaming herself for not watching their daughter closely enough.

Bogo, though, had never blamed his wife for so much as a moment. He had told Maria, as they watched their daughter sleep after her trip to the doctor, that jumping out of a window hadn't been _her_ idea. Maria had sighed as she folded herself against his side, reaching out and grabbing his hoof. "I've never had a student get so badly injured on my watch," she had said, "Never. But my own daughter..."

"Will keep making decisions of her own," Bogo had said, and he could still remember how Maria had felt against him as she nodded.

"The gods help us when she starts being interested in bulls," Maria had said, chuckling, and Bogo had known then that his wife would stop blaming herself for the accident.

Not entirely, or even all at once. But eventually, he knew, she would. And for her sake, he had made one of the jokes most of the mammals who knew him professionally wouldn't have guessed him capable of. "I'll arrest them," he had said in his best deadpan, and Maria had laughed, gently pushing his arm.

As Bogo walked through the ruined tunnels, the queen at his side and half a dozen of his best and most trustworthy trackers arrayed around them, he considered telling her the story before deciding against it. Telling someone not to blame themselves when their child was lost and likely in great peril was unlikely to be particularly helpful, and he didn't want to make the queen worry about anything else. The last thing she'd need would be to think his mind was slipping to the point he'd try telling her a story rather than focus on the task of finding Princess Isabel.

Still, the queen was doing an admirable job of hiding her worry; if he hadn't known her so well Bogo might have thought that she was simply intensely focused. But he could tell, from all the little cues that other mammals would miss, that she was only barely restraining herself from rushing off down the tunnels by herself, screaming herself hoarse as she called for her daughter.

But as horribly as it must have tormented her, she had deferred to Bogo's expertise in the search for Princess Isabel in every way except one. Namely, that the queen herself was accompanying him and his search party. As a father, he couldn't blame her. But as the leader of the City Guard...

Bogo blinked and almost stumbled as an odd realization hit him. He should have protested the queen accompanying him. She was putting herself in grave danger, considering everything that lurked below the surface of Phoenix, and he _should_ have said something. He would have ultimately deferred to her decision since he wasn't the sort of mammal to try executing a coup, but he should have protested.

And yet, unless his memory was failing him in new ways, he had not.

An icy twinge of unease started stirring in Bogo's gut, and although he tried to keep himself alert to the subtle clues that his guards were following that would hopefully lead them to the princess alive and well he couldn't. He had started becoming uncomfortably familiar with the realization that his attention wandered more freely than it ever had in the past, but all that had ever robbed him of was the knowledge of what someone had said to him. Completely forgetting what he himself had said was unsettling in a way he couldn't put into words.

Or, Bogo supposed, he could put it into words if he was honest with himself. It was frightening. Either he had completely forgotten a conversation in which he had tried convincing the queen to stay behind under guard or there never had been such a conversation in the first place. Neither option was good; either his mind was falling apart even faster than he could have guessed or he was becoming dangerously incompetent.

Bogo tried to ignore the snuffling of the wolves leading the tracking effort—with quauhxicallis boosting their already sensitive noses they were peerless trackers—and cast his mind back to the conversation that had led him deep underground. The beginning of it was easy to remember; he had been meeting with Cerdo and the queen about... something. Cerdo had been prattling on about something, Bogo recalled vaguely; the precise details escaped him but they didn't seem important. They had been interrupted by a messenger reporting that the princess was gone and all the evidence pointed to her having fled into the ruins under Phoenix.

And then?

A scowl crossed Bogo's face as the memory came to him. The queen had ordered a search party assembled at once, to be led by him, and said she would go along. He could remember it happening, but it felt _wrong_ somehow. He knew the queen very well after his years of service, and she wasn't one to blandly make declarations. She should have made some kind of comment about putting him in charge of the search party, whether it was to tell him that she trusted him alone to lead it or something similar. But Bogo couldn't remember anything along those lines. It all just struck him as particularly flat, in a way that was difficult to grasp. There was absolutely nothing wrong with his recollection, and yet there was.

But any further thoughts on the topic fled Bogo's mind when the lead guard came to a sudden halt and threw out one arm in a wordless warning to proceed no further. The remaining guards rearranged themselves into a tighter circle around him and the queen while the wolf slowly advanced, playing his alchemical torch here and there. For a while, Bogo wasn't sure why they had stopped, but he trusted that there was a reason for not talking.

The queen shot Bogo a questioning glance and he nodded reassuringly before looking back ahead to try spotting whatever had alerted the guard, but he couldn't make out anything out of the ordinary. The glow of the wolf's alchemical torch vanished into the darkness hundreds of feet ahead of them, swallowed by distance, and the minutes crawled slowly along until the light reappeared and the guard came jogging briskly back.

"There's a body ahead, sir," the wolf reported in a low voice, "Looks like the fox got attacked by an Ehecatl."

Bogo saw the queen's hooves reflexively clench themselves into tight fists, and he asked the obvious question. "And the princess?"

In the harsh glow of Bogo's own alchemical torch, the wolf's features took on an almost theatrical cast, his shaggy and dully gray fur making him look almost like a part of the wall given life. "She definitely went past, sir," the wolf reported crisply.

Bogo turned to the queen, whose relief was still mixed with worry. "You ought to go back, your majesty," he said, as gently but firmly as he could, "If there are Ehecatls—"

"If there are monsters, then you will protect me," she interrupted sharply.

The color seemed to have drained from the insides of her ears, and there was a firmness to how her jaw was set that made Bogo think she was forcing herself not to tremble. He couldn't help but admire and despair at her courage, the thought occurring to him that once again that as a parent he couldn't blame her resolve. "Your majesty—" he began again, and once more she interrupted him.

"It's not up for debate, Lord Bogo," she said.

They continued on through the tunnels, their most recent conversation only strengthening Bogo's conviction that there was something very odd about the one that had led them down through the tunnels. He wrestled with it even as he eventually saw what the wolf must have smelled.

There was drying blood coating the walls and floors of the tunnel.

It looked to have been a terrible and vicious fight; Bogo knew enough about Ehecatls to know that the results were never pretty. They eventually passed the corpse of the traitorous fox, and Bogo barely spared it a passing glance until one of the wolves spoke. "There's something strange about this, sir," she said.

"Can you tell what happened here?" Bogo asked.

The wolves exchanged glances, seeming to wordlessly communicate between themselves before the one who had been in the lead answered. "No sir," he said, "The fox seems to have been killed by an Ehecatl, but there isn't the fresh smell of one around here. The princess and Commandant Totchli both went that way."

The wolf paused briefly to indicate the direction, and then continued, "But the fox's scent continues in that direction too."

Bogo looked around, frowning. "He did bleed a lot," the queen observed, and despite the circumstances Bogo found it a peculiarly funny thing to hear her say.

"Yes, your majesty," the wolf replied respectfully.

"Is it possible that's why the scent goes on?" she asked.

The wolves exchanged another one of those wordless glances. "It's... unlikely, your majesty."

Bogo walked over to the corpse and looked at it more closely. It was, indisputably, the body of a fox. It seemed to have been badly mangled, but from the nauseating smell of blood coming off it it was—

Bogo's frown deepened. Ehecatls had a dangerous venom, he knew, one that caused blood to thicken into something like tar around the bite wound. Commandant Totchli herself had nearly died to such a wound, after all, and his memory wasn't so poor that he had forgotten that. It wasn't impossible for an Ehecatl to have ripped the fox apart without injecting him with that deadly venom, but if that had been the case, why was there a body at all? Ehecatls ate their victims, after all. And, as disgusting as the idea of eating meat was, there was an awful lot of it left on the fox's bones.

Bogo tried imagining what might have happened, the image flowing vividly through his head. The fox, desperately fleeing, with Commandant Totchli hot on his heels and the princess not far behind. When he ran across a monster, the fox died to it, and then it retreated when the rabbit caught up. It made a certain kind of sense; he could believe that a monster would leave its food behind rather than risk getting killed. But if that was the case, why had Totchli and the princess continued on _deeper_ into the tunnels under Phoenix?

No matter how he pushed the possibilities around in his mind, none of them made any kind of sense. He wondered if the corpse could be some kind of fake, but even with his limited knowledge of alchemy he knew that it'd take an absolute master to make something so convincing, and the fox was at best half-competent as an alchemist. If the augmented noses of his best trackers said the corpse was real, he was inclined to believe it was, and that made other possibilities—such as that it belonged to some _other_ fox with spectacularly poor luck—seem implausible.

"This doesn't make sense," Bogo said slowly, thinking aloud before he even realized he was doing it.

None of the wolves seemed surprised at his pronouncement, and even the queen seemed puzzled at what they had just come across. "It doesn't, Lord Bogo," she said, "But if my daughter's scent is still traceable, we _must_ keep going."

Bogo didn't have a counter-argument for that; every minute they stood waiting around trying to figure things out was another minute in which something awful could happen to the princess. "Lead on," he ordered the wolves.

Still, he would have felt better with more mammals at his side.

They were beginning to move with greater urgency, which Bogo recognized as a sign that they were getting closer and closer, the scent fresher and fresher. The wolves unerringly led them through tunnels that looked so similar that Bogo doubted he'd ever find his way back alone, and eventually the tunnels started rising. As they came to a large opening, the lead wolf suddenly stopped again, and Bogo did the same.

There, sitting on the ground near a sliver of what must have been an absolutely enormous alchemical array, was the traitorous Nicholas of the Middle Baronies, apparently completely unharmed. Cradled in his lap, unconscious or asleep but still breathing, was the form of Commandant Totchli. Standing near them, anxiously twisting her paws together, was Princess Isabel.

Bogo couldn't help but pause, staring at the bizarre sight before him; he never would have guessed that something so unexpected would be awaiting him. "Isabel!" the queen cried, but Bogo stretched out an arm to keep her back.

He had no idea what sort of strange trap they might be blundering into, but he had no intention of letting anyone—least of all a fox who should have been dead—harm the queen. "Mother!" Isabel shouted back, although Bogo couldn't help but notice that she seemed to be rooted where she stood, not budging so much as an inch, "I... We..."

"We can explain everything," the fox interrupted, his voice as cheerful as his expression suddenly became.


	67. Chapter 67

Opening the door was far less dramatic than Judy had thought it would be. The monster—which was a part of her if Nick was right—was gone, and the only thing she could see when she at last peered beyond the door frame was a very familiar corridor. It looked exactly as it had when she had been younger, all smoothly carved stone warmly lit by simple fixtures.

Or rather, it looked _almost_ exactly as it had.

The little chip of stone missing from the block almost opposite her bedroom door was the same as it had ever been, and further down the hall Judy could see the lighter colored patch where one of her older brothers had carved his name into the wall and then had to buff it out. But there were cracks she didn't remember there being, cracks that weren't quite the same as the one that had been in her bedroom. That one had been narrower, and looked to be nothing more than the stonework splitting. But in the hallway the cracks seemed went straight through the stone and she could see what was behind the walls.

Nothing.

Through the cracks was only an inky blackness more absolute than anything Judy had ever seen before, a darkness that seemed to swallow all light. She couldn't help but shiver at the sight, wondering what it meant. If her familial home really was nothing more than a representation of her mind, what could possibly exist outside the walls? Possibilities, each more dire than the last, seemed to present themselves as Judy stared into oblivion.

"It's probably best not to think about that," Nick said, making Judy jump.

"How—" Judy began, turning to look up at him, but he cut her off.

"You're thinking about what's outside these walls, right?" he said, and she nodded, her heart in her throat.

Judy didn't want to know—not really—but a horrible curiosity had overcome her; the cracks seemed almost to _want_ to draw her eyes back. "It's... like a lake," Nick said at last, "And we're in a boat. We're fine in here. But out there..."

He didn't seem to quite dare to gesture at the nearest crack and the yawning void at its center, but Judy thought she knew what he meant. "Best not to think about it," Judy said, and her words sounded feeble to her ears.

"Right," Nick said, but the smile he gave her seemed more than a little forced, "So why don't I take care of this one?"

He strode out of the bedroom, moving so carefully he didn't make a sound, and placed his paws on either side of the nearest crack, still not looking directly at it. Judy sucked in an anxious breath as the same thing that had happened before repeated itself. Nick's very solidity drifted away, his entire body seeming to become untethered and disparate. For a heart-stopping moment he didn't appear to be a fox at all, just a hazy orange cloud of shapes that didn't seem possible to reassemble into something living.

And then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped, and Nick was standing there again, leaning heavily against a wall unblemished by a crack. In the same moment, another memory clicked into place and Judy gasped. Visiting the War Gate for the first time had sprung into her head with such vividness that for a moment she could have sworn she was there. The familiar hallway of the Totchli Barony holding with its gentle lighting and cool air gave way in an instant to a blazingly hot spring day, the sun burning overhead and throwing a shimmering haze off the Middle Wall. The carvings of the very first members of the Zootopia City Guard loomed above her, impossibly large, and although their uniforms were centuries out of date their faces still showed everything Judy had wished to be. There was a nobility of purpose captured in their expressions, an unwavering devotion to duty and service of their city, and Judy felt awe once again.

But then the moment was gone and she was standing once more in what looked like her family home but wasn't, her awe giving way to an uneasy fear. "Nick?" Judy asked, and timidly reached out for him, "Are you alright?"

"Never better," he said, but he was still leaning heavily against the wall, "What about you? That was quite the memory."

"You could _see_ that?" Judy blurted before she could stop herself, and then shook her head.

"Never mind what I remembered," she said, "Don't lie to me."

"I'm not lying," Nick protested, and with what seemed like considerable effort he straightened himself until he was standing fully upright again, "I promised you I'll be by your side when you wake up. And I will."

"But—"

"But this does take quite a bit of effort, yes," Nick admitted, and Judy noticed that he was breathing heavily.

Not that he was actually breathing, she supposed; it was all just a matter of how she was interpreting things. "Come on," he urged, gesturing for her, "You know this place. I don't."

"Is your sense of direction failing you?" Judy asked.

She was still afraid. Afraid of what might happen if the other part of her stalking its way through her mind caught up to them. Afraid of Nick pushing himself too hard, no matter what he might say about the effort involved. Afraid, even, that she would always be as she currently was, feeling oddly diminished and incomplete. But teasing Nick almost made her feel normal.

Almost.

Nick grinned at her, seeming delighted by the words. "You wound me, Carrots," he said, placing one paw dramatically on his chest, "But this is your head. Not mine."

"But I don't know where we're supposed to go," she said.

"That's fine," he said, "Just lead."

Judy could feel her doubts creeping up on her again, and swallowing hard she tried to push them down. She could remember being brave; she could feel that once she would have had no trouble at all continuing. Now, though, it was almost more than she could bear to put one foot in front of the other and shakily walk down the hall. Once she was at Nick's side, he started following her, and they walked in silence for a moment before he spoke. "When was that, by the way?" he asked casually, "When you were looking at the Middle Wall."

Judy was surprised at the question, but the distraction was more than welcome. "Eighteen years ago," she said, doing the quick math.

"Ah," Nick said, "That explains how tiny you were."

Judy couldn't help but turn her head and look up at him. "Tiny?" she repeated.

"Oh, adorably so," he said, and he placed his palm parallel to the floor at a point not even above his waist, "You couldn't have been more than this tall."

He frowned at her, his expression one of mock concentration. "I think your ears got shorter, though. How'd that happen?"

Judy forced out a laugh she didn't quite feel, rolling her eyes, but there was still a part of her that felt a touch of warmth. "It was when I was a kit. We took a trip to the Middle Wall to look at the War Gate," she explained, and as though a burden had been lifted from her the words started flowing more freely.

She barely even noticed where they were going as she put into words, for the first time in her life, how much it had meant to her to see that representation of the City Guard's founding. How much it had inspired her to prove herself worthy of joining, how devoted she had been to that goal. Nick listened carefully, not interrupting, and it was only when the Judy had finally run out of words to explain herself that she noticed where they had ended up.

The kitchens of the barony holding were absolutely massive, but for a moment they seemed much _too_ large. And then Judy realized why; there was no one else but her and Nick present. There should have been dozens of bakers and cooks working industriously, filling the space and moving past and around each other with the easy grace of long practice at controlling the chaos. But there was no one around, and the kitchens looked oddly pristine. Rows and rows of ovens lined one wall, but for the first time Judy had ever seen not a single one was active. Massive pots stood empty on cold stove tops, and the usual warmth coming off the ovens was completely gone. There were still herbs and spices hanging to dry from the thick wooden supports that ran across the ceiling, their ghostly scents the one thing about the kitchens that still felt right.

Judy started looking around, trying to find a reason for her feet to have led them to the kitchens, but she couldn't spot anything. The kitchens had never had windows, so unlike her bedroom there wasn't an unusually blank wall. There were no unusual cracks in the walls, either, neither the more benign looking one that had crossed her bedroom nor the more ominous one in the corridor immediately outside it.

Aside from being empty, there simply didn't seem to be anything particularly important about the room, and Judy tried desperately searching her memory. Unless it was something she didn't remember she had forgotten, the kitchen didn't seem to hold any sort of special significance. She had never been a particularly good cook or baker, but she hadn't been terrible either. It had certainly been a room always warm in both the literal sense and the familial one, but it just didn't seem significant.

Nick didn't seem to have had any better luck than her; he was still looking about with a slowly deepening frown on his muzzle. "Maybe we have to keep going," he said softly, looking back to the door they had passed through.

There was only one way in or out of the kitchen; it was also the single largest door in the entire building, wider even than the main entrance. Judy's father had been fond of saying it showed what was really important, but her mother had taken a more practical view, saying that when things got busy it still wasn't wide enough. They had never tried modifying the kitchens, though; it seemed to be one of those things her parents had talked about a lot but never got around to actually doing. The door, as it almost always did, hung open, sagging ever so slightly on the side opposite the hinge.

As Judy looked at the door, which despite its great size was modestly made of a several enormous planks of wood joined together with brass given a mellow shine by the touch of countless paws brushing past, she suddenly realized why the kitchen was important and an icy flood of fear ran through her stomach. "Nick," she whispered, but before she could say anything else the door slammed suddenly shut.

Judy ran for the door, but the distance between her and it didn't seem to decrease so much as an inch, the floor nightmarishly stretching out before her. Nick grabbed her paw as he ran for the door too, and as he pulled her along the door actually started getting closer.

Hope flared briefly in her chest and then immediately fizzled when she pulled on the sturdy handle; the door was as immovable as a wall. "It won't open!" Judy said, panic making her voice high and tight.

Nick's paws wrapped around the handle too, just above hers, and he pulled mightily, the tendons of his neck visible even under his fur. "It's your mind!" he said, "Imagine the door opening and—"

"No, no, it's not!" Judy cried, "It's _hers_! This is all _hers_!"

A terrible and yet somehow familiar laugh filled the room and then the lights instantly went out. Judy spun around, trembling as she peered into the darkness. In the blink of an eye, all of the ovens flared to life at once, and in their dim red glow Judy could see a figure standing at the center of the room. A rabbit in the uniform of a commandant stood before her, easily taller than Nick and broader by far across the shoulders. Her armor gleamed dully in the light, the fine engravings seeming to shift and twist. The figure rested one paw on a massive sword sheathed at her waist, but it was the face that was by far the most frightening. The eyes staring down at Judy were cold and remorseless, the mouth set in a contemptuous line.

"Found you," the rabbit said.


	68. Chapter 68

Nicholas could remember every plan Nick had ever made. It'd be odd if he couldn't, really; Nick had an excellent memory and so far as Nicholas could tell he knew absolutely everything his progenitor did up to the point of his creation.

But he wasn't Nick.

Knowing that he was a copy gave him a sort of distance from all of those plans, which he hadn't actually made, after all. He could remember all the intricacies of working them out, as well as what had actually happened. Nick prided himself on his ability to look forward and see a path that no one else had, which was at its heart the key to every success he had ever had.

Still, Nicholas was beginning to wonder if maybe neither one of them was as good at planning as they had thought.

It probably wasn't the appropriate moment for the thought, but being in a representation of Judy's mind and being menaced by a part of that mind seemed to have thrown things into focus. It was an absurd thought for an absurd moment, which really seemed to underscore the point. How could he have possibly seen it coming?

The short answer was that he couldn't have. Nicholas had actually felt somewhat optimistic, when things had started. He had managed to find Judy—or at least, the part of her that didn't want him dead—and fixed some of the damage to her broken mind. It had given him hope that he would indeed be able to fix the damage and Judy's shattered mind would come back together on its own, two halves that would naturally become whole if given the chance. He had even had the chance to see Judy as a kit when her memory of seeing the Middle Wall up close had drifted into focus. Everything had been going about as well as he could have hoped, considering how much of everything he was doing was guesswork.

Like telling Judy that she could imagine the door to the kitchen opening and it would.

It _felt_ like it should be true; considering everything else he had seen while inside her mind, the instant Judy willed it to happen it should have. The fact that the two of them were still trapped in the kitchen, Judy frantically pulling at the handle, while another chunk of Judy's mind advanced on them certainly suggested that he was wrong. And, again, that he might as well not have planned anything, but there was no changing that.

The piece of Judy before them was certainly more intimidating than the first piece Nicholas had encountered. The one he had found cowering in her bedroom had been... soft. Nicholas wasn't sure what the right word was, and considering how grim the armor wearing Judy walking toward him looked he could probably be spending his time better. But it was true. The part of Judy he had spent the most time with was barely like the entire bunny, but in an odd way it made her more like him. Judy seemed as fearless and determined as a heroine out of an old story, the kind that always did the right thing and never gave up.

It was inspiring, but it was also a little intimidating.

Nicholas certainly didn't prefer Judy without her spark and fire, but it made him feel for her more, in a way. He had never had that sort of courage. What must it have been like to _know_ what that felt like, and then lose it? Maybe it was better to have never been brave in the first place.

"This is the end for you," the armored Judy said, interrupting Nicholas's panicked and yet oddly calm musings.

He felt as though he was _almost_ onto something, but he just didn't know what. Repairing the damage to Judy's mind—what she visualized as cracks in her family home—had taken so much out of him that it seemed as though there was barely anything left. And as glib as he could be, figuring out what to say was a bit difficult, especially when there was the awful smile on the approaching rabbit's face to consider.

She was enjoying herself.

Nicholas had no doubt of that; she was enjoying the panicked scrambling of her other half, her softer half, and was dragging out the moment. That was about as unlike Judy as what that softer half had shown, just in the opposite direction, and Nicholas had to wonder a bit at the source of it. She seemed to have all of Judy's courage, but there had to be something else to her. Something that apparently made her cruel.

And it was cruelty that lit up her face; it was cruelty that made menace radiate off her like a haze of heat coming off a building on a summer day. She was taller than Judy had ever been, taller even than he was, and almost disturbingly muscular for a rabbit.

"Why?"

The word seemed to have slipped out of Nicholas's mouth before he had even been aware that he was going to say it, and as he spoke both Judys froze. The soft Judy paused in her frantic attempts to force the door and actually turned to face her other half. That half stopped advancing, and Nicholas fancied he saw something else on her face.

Confusion.

Or simply some sort of irritation, but Nicholas was grasping at straws and he'd take what he could get. The feeling of being close to something finally clicked home, and Nicholas realized his mouth had gotten the idea before it actually registered in his mind. He had done his best to plan out what to do. Granted, he had thus far seemingly failed miserably, but still. There had been a plan to try following. Even the softer Judy had a motivation that made sense; she was petrified of her harder self and had tried desperately hiding.

"Why are you trying to kill her?" Nicholas demanded, and he found himself profoundly grateful for Nick's poise.

His progenitor wasn't exactly an unusually courageous mammal at heart, but he was a clever one. Nicholas was more than a little afraid, but he didn't think it showed in his voice at all as he positioned himself between the two bunnies. Perhaps it wouldn't do much more than stall for a little more time, but sometimes stalling and hoping for something to happen was what it all came down to. It had worked decently well for Nick. A couple times, at least, and all Nicholas needed was for it to work once.

The terrible Judy before him laughed, and it was a horrible sound. There was no joy or happiness in it, just a contempt that Nicholas would have never guessed Judy to be capable of. "You can see her pawing at a door like that and you actually ask _why_ I'd do it?" the rabbit asked, and she smiled again, "I'll be doing her a favor."

She took a step forward, slowly drawing forth her sword. Some part of Nicholas that felt very detached from what was going on in front of him noticed that it was rather large and looked wickedly sharp. "She's weak," the rabbit said, taking another step, "She's why no one ever took me seriously. They could _see_ that weakness. It ruined me. She trusted you and you mutilated _me_."

The rabbit held up her left arm, letting the sleeve fall back, and for the first time Nicholas noticed just how terribly wrong it was. It wasn't a fox arm and paw, as Judy's actual body had. It wasn't even what her arm had looked like when it had been mangled and swollen with venom. It was ghastly in a way that Nicholas would have never thought possible; compared to her otherwise athletic build the arm looked at first oddly withered.

But it wasn't simply withered; there was almost no flesh still clinging to the bones, and what little there was looked raw and gangrenous, completely devoid of fur. When the rabbit clenched her glistening white fingers into a fist, Nicholas could see the exposed tendons and hear them creak.

"So I'll start with you first," she leered at him.

"No!" Judy—the softer Judy—cried, and with surprising speed she was suddenly in front of Nicholas, pressing him behind her.

"I— I won't let you h-hurt Nick," she said, and although her voice and her body were trembling like a leaf in a storm she did not move.

The other Judy stared for a moment, and then laughed again, even more cruelly than before. "Nick?" she said, "You're weaker than I thought."

The softer Judy looked back over her shoulder at Nicholas, confusion etched into her face. "Nick?" she asked, "What is she..."

The dawning realization that spread across her features hurt more than Nicholas thought it would have. "You're not Nick, are you? You're the one in my head."

"Yeah," he admitted softly, "I am."

"You said you'd be there when I wake up!"

"Nick will be," Nicholas said, even though he knew how weak of a counterpoint it was.

He had lied to her, plain and simple. He could tell himself he had simply misled her, but that was all semantics. "He'll be there for you," Nicholas said.

Judy nodded, and from the way tears welled up in her eyes again he thought she understood what he had known but hadn't admitted. Fixing the damage to Judy's mind had come with a cost just like any other act of alchemy, but he didn't have any tricks. He didn't even have a body. And it seemed like every crack he had fixed had pulled away at him a little, unraveling him just a little more like cutting off lengths from a ball of twine. At first, there wouldn't be any obvious sign that the ball was getting smaller and smaller each time more twine was removed. But it was, and soon enough there wouldn't be any twine left.

"No," the harsher Judy said, "He'll be waiting for _me_. But I'll be ready for him when I wake up."

She swung out with her sword, but rather than trying to strike Nicholas or the other Judy she aimed her blade at the wall. It cleaved in a way utterly unlike how stone should have behaved; it seemed soft as mud. When she pulled her blade back, there was another of those terrifying cracks, one that seemed to have an unending void behind it. But it didn't stay as thin as the blade that had made it. The wall seemed to slide apart, that infinite gulf yawning wider and wider, and Nicholas realized what she was intending to do a moment too late.

The other Judy sheathed her sword in a single rapid motion and strode forward, seizing Nicholas around his wrist with her horribly skeletal paw. Her grasp felt impossibly tight, and no matter how Nicholas strained against it he couldn't break free. The harsh Judy grabbed the softer one with her other paw, lifting them both effortlessly. "You can't do this!" the softer Judy cried, but her eyes were wide with fear and panic, "You need me!"

Her taller and much stronger counterpart chuckled. "No, I don't. I'm doing away with both of you," she said, "When you're in oblivion I'll finally have peace."

Nicholas squirmed helplessly, but there wasn't anything he could do to break her grasp. And then, as the other Judy prepared to throw them into a void that he knew would destroy them utterly, he had an idea. It wasn't much of one, but it was better than nothing. Besides, it was a little late for planning.


	69. Chapter 69

Judy was so close to victory that she could taste it.

There was a certain pleasure in succeeding when everyone said she would fail that she wouldn't deny. Why would she? At her lowest moments, when she had been weakest, that stubborn desire to prove the naysayers wrong had been what got her to go on. Judy could admit that to herself; part of being strong meant knowing where she was weak. And now, at long last, she had the opportunity to excise that weakness entirely.

The rabbit she grasped in one paw was like a grotesque mockery, all of her failings magnified and exaggerated and given a terrible life. She was soft. Weak. Every reason why other mammals said a rabbit couldn't join the City Guard made flesh. She was overly trusting (especially of the hated fox) and emotional and lacked any kind of strength. Even now, all her reflection could do was tremble in fear, eyes wide with panic and shining with tears. She wasn't even fighting Judy, which made it all the worse. Judy would have fought to her dying breath to free herself, but the feeble rabbit wasn't even futilely trying to break her grasp. It was a favor Judy was doing, really.

And yet...

Judy tried pressing the thought down, but couldn't help it. She was absolutely sure she was doing the right thing; of the two of them she was certainly the one who deserved life. Of the two of them, she was unquestionably the stronger. The braver. Judy knew she was better by any possible metric, and in that she was certainly unwavering. And yet there was a certain hollowness to her victory.

Judy couldn't quite name what the feeling was, but it was almost as though something was missing. She had felt it, ever since she had come to in a maelstrom of memories, surrounded on all sides by an infinite void that seemed to want to press in. Judy hadn't been afraid, of course—she hadn't felt so much as a twinge of alarm ever since awakening—but there was still something off. She had brushed it aside at first, as she had begun to explore her bizarre surroundings. Or at least, as she had explored them as much as she could while they shifted and split around her, never seeming to be the same thing twice.

At one moment she had been trudging across the glassy wasteland that separated the Middle Baronies from the Outer Baronies, enormous craters dotting the ruined landscape. The next she had been wandering the hallways of the academy, so utterly abandoned of cadets that the echo of her footsteps sounded as though it would never end. No matter where she was, though, that oppressive void seemed to be slowly reaching its way in. Above the wastelands it had hung like a malevolent sky, a black so perfect that it seemed to be sucking the very colors from the land. In the academy it had leered in through the windows, and Judy could have sworn that it was somehow pressing up against the glass.

And then she had found the rabbit.

Judy had thought, at first, that she looked like her twin, but her subsequent experiences had proved that not to be the case. Her reflection had seemed asleep, and Judy had stridden up to her, as fearless as ever. Some part of her had even been glad to find someone else, and Judy had shaken the rabbit until her eyes opened.

It had been a bit uncanny, seeing something that she had of course never seen before—what she looked like as she woke. It had familiar and yet utterly alien at the same time, watching those purple eyes she knew well from seeing them in mirrors blearily blink and then look about, an equally familiar mouth making sleepy little noises. And then the rabbit had locked eyes with Judy and everything went wrong.

The rabbit had screamed, so loudly and so close that it hurt, and as she had recoiled, clapping her paws over her ringing ears, the rabbit had bolted upright and fled. Judy had followed almost at once, but the as she did the landscape stopped shifting and locked itself into what she recognized as her family home. That had been odd. Odder still, though, was that no matter how quickly she ran after the obviously terrified rabbit, she couldn't get any closer. At last her quarry had thrown herself into a room—her old bedroom, as a matter of fact—and slammed the door shut behind her.

And the door had seemed as immovable as though it had been a wall.

Judy had tried pulling at it with all her strength, and as she did it seemed as though she only got stronger. Taller, too; it was impossible not to notice that the doorknob seemed to get lower and lower, as though she had grown at least three feet or the building had shrunken. Judy had given the door one final kick of frustration before moving on.

She had vaguely hoped that the scenery would rearrange itself, as it had before, but it seemed obdurately determined to remain the old family home. Judy had never despised it, of course, but she had never really belonged. The academy was her real home, where she had proven herself up to the rigors of her chosen job. Judy had shown them all, no matter how much other cadets had excluded her and even some of the professors had given her less than a fair shake.

And yet...

No matter how much she imagined those familiar corridors and rooms, nothing changed. The conclusion she reached, as absurd as it seemed to imagine, was that the other rabbit—that helpless, frightened, weak little thing—was somehow in control. It made absolutely no sense, but the more Judy thought on it, as she wandered the corridors and peered in the rooms of the old seat of Totchli Barony, the less any of it made sense.

Reality, as far as she knew, wasn't prone to warp and twist without any warning. There had to be some reason she had found herself where she had, and yet an answer refused to come. The more she thought on it, the more obvious it was that there were gaps in her memories. Large ones at that, where it seemed as though everything was just a hazy blur. Was the other rabbit feeling the same thing? Judy had felt something peculiar at the thought; not a feeling but an absence of one. It felt as though there should have been something to accompany her musings, some kind of feeling about the weaker rabbit.

But all she had felt was idle curiosity.

As Judy had continued her search for anything of use, it had felt as though things had started slowly making sense. The strength she felt wasn't just physical; it was mental, too. She felt more confident than she had ever felt in her life, and her usual doubts had left her. It had been liberating, and with it she realized exactly what the other rabbit must have been: nothing less than all of her weaknesses separated from her.

Memories had started coming back, as she kept wandering, and although some of them had hurt—remembering what the fox had done to her had been accompanied by agonizing pain as her arm withered and yet grew no weaker—she had welcomed each one as making her stronger and stronger. And, although she didn't seem capable of controlling the environment she was in, what it actually was occurred to her in a sudden flash.

She was lost within her own mind, and there could be no doubt that the fox was responsible. Judy's hatred for him felt stronger than ever, but also _purer_ than ever. There were no quibbles or caveats. There was no uncertainty in her feelings for him, just loathing so clean and absolute it was almost intoxicating.

More than that, though, was the realization that _he_ had defiled her mind. There was a fragment of him running around, and to Judy it was like a maddening itch. She would have to eliminate both versions of the fox, the one who didn't have a body and the one who did. And, while she was at it, put the weaker version of herself out of her misery.

There was again that almost joyful sense of rightness to her thoughts. It was as though she was one of the heroines from an old story, the kind who always knew exactly what to do no matter how tricky or skilled their opponent was. Judy knew she would win, and her confidence felt as pure as everything else, unaffected by any doubts.

Or at least, it had started off like that.

As Judy had planned on how to catch her prey, the answer had come to her nearly at once. What she needed was a room with only one way in or out, a room where she could easily hide from view. The kitchen had been the obvious choice; her parents had dithered about remodeling it for years without ever managing to actually go ahead and perform the work. Judy had crept into it, hiding herself away, and waited.

She even seemed more patient than usual, free of her weakness; Judy wasn't sure how long she waited but she had plenty of time to think. And once again, that sense of something missing had crept back into her thoughts. She told herself she was doing the right thing, as she had always tried to do. That had been her entire life, really; Judy had always tried to do the right thing no matter how difficult it had been. It was why she had wanted to join the City Guard in the first place; Judy wanted to help other mammals.

But suddenly that didn't seem so important.

The idea of helping others had filled her with a sort of warmth in the past. Now, though, there was nothing. Why did it matter what other mammals did or what they felt? The rule of law mattered, not feelings. And Judy was obeying her orders perfectly; she would destroy the shadow of himself the fox had planted in her head, wake up, and then capture or kill the real one. Purging herself of a lesser version of herself was an unexpected bonus, but it was really the fox's fault that she had the opportunity.

That thought had made things feel absolutely right again, and Judy had waited with no further unease for the weakling and the fox to stumble into her trap. To her delight, it had worked even better than she thought it would. The fear her failings felt for her only made Judy faster and stronger; if the lesser Judy could control the environment then it would also her undoing. The stoves had flared dramatically to life, and the door had sealed itself, the bunny's terror making it absolutely immovable.

From there, it had been a simple matter to draw her sword and cut through one of the walls to the void beyond, the weapon made impossibly sharp because the weakling was so afraid. The weakling had dared claim that Judy needed her, but she was utterly wrong, of course. And now she had them both in her grasp. At last, all that separated her from utter victory, from banishing the worst parts of herself entirely, was to pitch the trash into the abyss.

There was pleasure in it, certainly, but not nearly as much as there was at the thought of being utterly rid of the meddlesome fox. His copy, at least, was trying to fight even as Judy walked ever closer to the slash she had made, ready to throw him first. It was almost admirable, in a way, that even a pale imitation of him refused to give up. It almost made him a worthy opponent.

Almost.

But he was helpless against her grasp, no matter how he scrabbled at her paw; she could barely feel his claws. But then, as Judy prepared herself to throw him into the void, he did something completely unexpected. He twisted his neck to look behind him at his impending demise and then lifted his legs, placing his feet on either side of the gash Judy had made in the castle wall. It was futile, of course; Judy had no doubt that she was strong enough to break every bone in his body (assuming that in the representation of her mind he had bones to break), and she prepared herself to push hard. The fox reached out with one paw, stretching until he managed to catch the weakling's. With his other paw, he reached forward, grim determination taking over his face, and wrapped it around Judy's arm.

And then he unraveled.

Judy had never seen anything like it; his body seemed to come utterly apart. It wasn't gory or messy, the way it would have been if a mammal had been disemboweled, but rather as clean as a pulling a thread on a rug. He had become nothing more than a mess of threads, orange and brown and white and the mocking green of his eyes, and they tightened around Judy's arm. She cried out in surprise, but couldn't pull free; her arm had become bound to that of the weaker Judy by a mass of colored strands so fine they appeared completely flat.

 _She's right, you know. You_ do _need each other._

The fox's voice was suddenly in her head, but there was something beyond his usual mocking tone to it. He sounded almost sad, and Judy roared her defiance. "No I don't!" she cried, swinging her other arm, the one that still held the weakling tightly, toward the void.

If she lost a paw destroying her flaws, so be it; Judy knew she had to be free of them and the fox if she had any hope of waking up and succeeding at her mission.

 _Afraid I can't let you do that, Carrots._

His voice came again, louder this time, and echoing in her mind, and the strings binding her arm to the bunny grew as tight and inflexible as steel.

 _Cerdo's command broke when your mind did, you know. I see that now._

The hated fox was still talking, and the colored lines that had once been his body started glowing as they shifted, spreading up her arm even as she struggled to break his grasp. Dazzling patterns started forming, the connection between her and the lesser Judy growing ever more elaborate.

 _So that means the only reason you're still on this kick is your stubborn pride. You can let it go._

His voice was only getting louder and louder, blotting everything else out. "I won't!" Judy cried, "You can't make me! I'm stronger than you, _fox_!"

The fox's laughter filled her head, loud and mocking. _The Judy I know is, yeah. But you're only half of her. It's time to put the two of you back together._

The threads binding her to her copy grew tighter and tighter, drawing them closer and closer together even as alchemical patterns formed and twisted across their arms. Judy cried out wordlessly, but she couldn't hear herself over him as his words went into her mind again.

 _I know you don't care about this now, but you will. And you ought to know it's not your fault I'm going._

The bindings connecting her to the other rabbit had drawn together so much that their arms were touching now, the lines on either arm coming together into a single complicated and beautiful alchemical array. The glowing lines grew brighter and brighter, and the fox's voice in her head spoke for the last time.

 _Judy, I... You know what? I'll let him say it when you wake up._


	70. Chapter 70

Nick had managed to talk his way out of his fair share of tough situations before, and many of them hadn't even been his fault. Like the time he had been rather unjustly accused of spilling a drink on the largest and meanest tiger he had ever set eyes on. That had worked out pretty well in the end. Or at least, he had been able to walk away with all his teeth still in his head, which had at least felt like a victory.

Or maybe his standards for winning were just on the low side.

Either way, spending as much time in Phoenix as he had was enough to have prepared Nick for life without the safety net that mammals in Zootopia took for granted. If that wolf _had_ decided to beat him to a pulp, there wouldn't have been a torc to stop him from doing so. Or, if not stopping him, ensuring that the wolf would have injured himself just as badly in the process.

If he tried putting a positive spin on it, facing down the City Guard was really the exact same sort of challenge. Whether inside Zootopia or in Phoenix, the only way they'd injure themselves fighting someone was if they cracked a claw punching too hard. So really, if he thought about it, having the mind-controlled head of the City Guard, the equally mind-controlled queen, and a gamut of guardsmammals before him, while he sat with his back to an alchemical array that could scramble his own mind, with the mammal he cared most about unconscious in his lap with a frankly slim chance of recovery, was—

No, he couldn't do it.

Telling himself it wasn't the worst situation he had ever found himself in was the sort of lie even he would have hesitated to tell someone else, let alone himself. It was bad. More than bad, it was the worst. But for his own sake, and the sake of the princess (who was fumbling over her words in a way that he could feel quite sympathetic for), Nick plastered his cheeriest possible smile on his face and said, "We can explain everything."

He couldn't, of course, but lying had worked pretty well in the past. Why not try again now? "You can make your explanations from a cell," Captain General Bogo replied, his face somehow managing to be even grimmer than usual, "Take your paws away from the Commandant."

Nick raised his paws as slowly as he could, spreading his fingers wide in what he hoped was as cooperative and non-threatening a manner as possible. "She's fine," he said, although that lie hurt him a little, "Just a little tuckered out, that's all."

He offered another smile. "You know how bunnies are, right?"

From the way Bogo's face twisted, Nick thought he might as well have insulted the hulking buffalo's mother at her funeral, and he could feel his heart beating faster. It had already seemed to be going about as fast as it possibly could, but it turned out to be possible to get even more nervous. It was far from his happiest discovery, but he did some of his best work under pressure. He also made some of his worst mistakes under similar situations, but that wasn't worth dwelling on.

"Come over here, dear," the queen said.

She was gesturing at the princess, of course; Nick would have been rather surprised if she had spoken to him that way. Unlike Bogo, who was looking at Nick as though he was trying to burn holes in him with his eyes, the queen's face was an anxious mess. It actually made Nick a bit jealous; it had been a very long time since he had seen his mother look at him like that.

Nick could practically feel how torn the princess was between wanting to do as her mother asked and wanting to stand by his side. It was obvious to him, from the expression on her face to the way she anxiously played with her paws. "Get away from that alchemical array," the queen urged.

The guards who were accompanying the queen and the Captain General were looking at the array rather nervously, and Nick supposed that he couldn't blame them. To the vast majority of mammals, alchemy was a strange and mysterious art, practiced by mammals who did their best to maintain that impression. Most mammals knew at least some of the things alchemy could do, of course—no one seemed to give alchemical torches so much as a second thought, despite how remarkable even that simple bit of alchemy was—but very few understood its limits. For all the guards knew, the array Nick had his back to could utterly destroy Phoenix or turn them all into chickens; it wasn't as though any of them could tell what it was actually intended to do.

The truth of its power was a bit more terrifying than either of those possibilities, as even without being able to study the entire array Nick understood it well enough. And with that thought the pieces clicked together in his mind.

"Don't do that, your majesty," Nick said, turning his attention to the princess, "It won't end well."

The puzzled look she shot him was, admittedly, not ideal. It was why he had almost always preferred to work alone; a good accomplice was hard to find and a bad one would just ruin the intended effect. Nick felt the smile he wore becoming somewhat more natural, even though he doubted any of the mammals watching him could tell. If the Captain General and the queen thought he was some kind of villain, then by all the gods he was going to give them what they were expecting.

"I'm prepared to destroy Phoenix entirely if my demands aren't met," Nick said, doing his best to infuse his voice with the proper menace.

He wasn't entirely sure he had succeeded, but considering that most mammals were predisposed to distrust foxes he thought it might have done the job. The guards—who had, he realized, been craftily creeping forward ever so slowly—froze, and Nick thought he could actually see flickers of unease crossing their faces.

"This isn't a negotiation, fox," Captain General Bogo spat, but before he could say anything more the queen lowered her arm in front of him.

"What are your demands?" she asked.

Her voice wasn't as harsh as the buffalo's, but there was definitely a chilly aspect to it. "Your majesty—" Bogo began protesting, but she cut him off.

"Do _you_ know what he might be capable of?" the queen asked.

It would almost be a compliment, if it weren't also so insulting. Still, all things considered, Nick was more than a little glad that the queen cared enough about the safety of either her daughter or Phoenix enough not to simply order him killed.

"A wise decision, your majesty," Nick said, improvising wildly, "If I die, this array will activate itself. And that would be bad."

Nick winced internally; as a threat it had been more than a little underwhelming. If anything, though, the simple way he had phrased it seemed to have had the desired effect. Bogo still looked angry, but his anger looked to have settled down to a sort of simmer rather than a rolling boil. The queen gestured sharply at the guards. "Lower your weapons, for the sake of the gods!" she snapped, and they did so with a speed that was rather impressive.

"What are your demands?" she repeated.

"Don't you want to know _why_ I'm doing what I'm doing?" Nick asked, trying to stall long enough to come up with an actual plan.

Bogo crossed his arms across his chest. "Talk, fox," he said.

"Oh, it's simple, really," Nick said, looking down at the claws of one paws as modestly as he could, which he also used as an opportunity to check on Judy.

She was, unfortunately, the same as she had been. Her breathing was slow and even and her eyes were closed. The fiery glow of a philosopher's stone still came from between her tightly clenched fingers, but she otherwise seemed almost bonelessly limp. She hadn't changed a bit since his mental double had started trying to stitch her broken mind back together, and the beginning of an idea struck Nick. If he was right, Judy's mind had broken in the first place because of the conflict between what she actually believed and what she had been ordered to believe. Maybe, just maybe, it was possible to get Bogo and the queen to a similar point, albeit one that hopefully stopped a bit short of breaking their minds; he still didn't know if Judy would ever actually wake up. Nick looked back up, straight into Bogo's eyes with all the confidence he could muster. Which was, he thought, quite a lot. "I'm planning on taking over Zootopia and ruling it from the shadows for the good of all mammals," Nick said.

Bogo actually blinked at that. Was it just optimism—something which Nick generally tried to squash down as much as he possibly could—or had there been a flicker of recognition at that? Considering the control that Cerdo could exert, he had guessed that the pig was keeping Bogo and the queen in the dark about his motives even as he sent them into the ruins to do his dirty work. Unless he was very much mistaken, Nick was guessing that the scheming lord had thought that the princess wouldn't be able to resist her mother calling for her to come back. It was a nasty trick, but also one that Nick thought proved that the pig didn't understand the nature of mammals quite as well as he probably thought he did.

Or, at the very least, that he was underestimating the princess. She did love her mother, after all, and she did want to obey her. But the princess was also pretty clearly not stupid, and she had to know what it meant for her mother to appear at Bogo's side. "That's impossible," the queen protested, and she turned to her daughter, asking, "Is he telling the truth?"

"He's..." the princess began hesitantly, and then she seemed to catch her nerve and continued in a far more confident fashion, "He's telling the truth. I've seen the things he does to mammals that cross him. He put Commandant Totchli into an endless sleep."

She wasn't the best liar Nick had ever met, but she wasn't half bad. The princess had even given Judy's still form a significant look as she spoke, which was good. It would have been better for her to simply imply that he was capable of terrible things rather than inventing something on the spot he'd have to try to make credible, but she was still young. The guards were looking positively uneasy now, and Nick pressed his advantage.

"It's _not_ impossible, because I've had help from within your court. Lord Cerdo has been working for me for years."

"Lord Cerdo is an honorable mammal," Bogo said, but his words came back with a speed and an intonation that struck Nick as being rather unnatural.

Nick sincerely hoped it was something that he had been forced to believe rather than something he genuinely did; if Bogo had held a positive impression of the pig he'd be rather disappointed in the buffalo's intelligence. But then, life was full of disappointments. "Is he?" Nick challenged, "Think about it. He's been manipulating you all along."

There were no further protestations from Bogo or the queen, which was at least a start. Nick didn't get the feeling that either one fully believed him yet, but at least neither was automatically claiming that the pig was innocent. If Judy was any indication, maybe he was close. Or maybe not; Nick wished he had had enough time to set up an anti-alchemy array.

"So," Nick continued, "Here's how it's going to go. I'm going to make my very reasonable demands, and none of your guards are going to try anything funny. If anyone takes so much as another step toward me, I'll make them sleep forever just like Commandant Totchli."

"He can do it," the princess added, nodding her head perhaps a bit too rapidly, "I've seen his alchemy."

Bogo scowled, but when the queen spoke he didn't interrupt. "I'm listening," the queen said.

"I—" Nick began, but he was interrupted by the feeling of Judy squirming in his lap.

He couldn't help but look down into her face as she opened her eyes, blinking rapidly before looking straight into his. "Nick?" she asked, and he felt himself freeze even as his heart soared in his chest.

Of all the possible times for what he wanted more than anything to occur, of course she would come to right after he had used her unconsciousness as a threat. It really _did_ seem like the gods enjoyed a good laugh at his expense.


	71. Chapter 71

Awareness came back to Judy slowly, and nothing quite seemed to make sense. There was nothing to see but a bland stone ceiling, crumbling a bit with age and lit by a peculiar red glow. She couldn't remember where she was or how she had gotten there, and she blinked as she tried looking around. Her eyes felt oddly heavy and sluggish in her head, as did the rest of her body; Judy had never been more tired in her entire life. There was something warm and familiar under her back, though, and then Judy saw at last something other than a boring ceiling.

Nick.

She spoke his name without even realizing she was about to, a twinge of something fluttering in her chest. Two wildly different sets of memories came back to her at once, of seeing herself from two different perspectives, neither one of which aligned. But as Nick looked back into her eyes, the feeling in her chest resolved itself into a powerful sense of relief. Judy finally felt like herself again.

When she had been split, both halves of her had been aware of what they had lacked, but the fearfulness of lacking courage had almost been better than the cold focus of lacking empathy. But she was whole again, and it was all thanks to Nick. Or at least, to a part of him. A lump built up in her throat, and Judy didn't try fighting it. She could remember exactly what the sliver of Nick who had lived in her head had done, what he had sacrificed, and it seemed monstrously unfair.

Some part of her half-expected to hear a response to the thought in her head—something like, "You won't be rid of me that easily, Carrots," perhaps—but although Judy could conjure up the words and even the tone she knew it was just her imagining them. That spark of life was gone, and she was alone in her head once more.

Nick—she couldn't think of him simply as the _real_ Nick anymore; after what his mental copy had sacrificed it seemed to diminish him to think of him as being anything less than real—was still looking down at her, his expression frozen somewhere between hope and despair. No one else would be able to see it, but Judy could. He was desperately afraid, and it wasn't difficult to guess why. He'd have no idea that she came back whole; for all he knew she was about to try killing him again.

Judy tried speaking again, but the words didn't seem to want to move past the lump in her throat. But from that reaction alone, she could tell, Nick understood. Relief lit up his face and made it handsome in a way that had nothing at all to do with how he looked and everything to do with how he carried himself. The tension seemed to have left him, and he murmured something so quietly that Judy could barely hear it, his lips barely moving.

"Picked a great time to wake up, Carrots," he said, but even with the words as faint as they were she could hear the smile in them.

Judy wanted to wrap her arms around him and hug him tight, but her body still felt extraordinarily heavy and weak. Simply moving her neck to try to get a better look at what was going took so much effort that her head felt like it was going to spin off. What she saw took a moment to understand, simply because of how bizarre it seemed.

The queen and Captain General Bogo were standing next to a number of guardsmammals, while the princess stood near where Nick and Judy were. She seemed to have woken up in the middle of some kind of standoff, and Judy wondered what could have possibly happened between her attempt to subdue Nick and waking up. "Well, maybe not _forever,_ " Nick said cheerfully, "But a long time."

Judy had no idea what the context of that was, but she got the feeling that Nick wasn't doing too well. The broad strokes of what was happening seemed suddenly obvious—Cerdo must have gained control of the queen as he had controlled both Bogo and Judy herself, and he had sent them after Nick or the princess—but she had no idea what Nick's plan was.

Or, for that matter, if he even had one. Judy had come to a creeping suspicion that, no matter how meticulously he planned things, Nick relied on improvisation and self-confidence more than he would probably care to admit. She wanted to help him, of course, but she had no idea what to do.

"You lied about what you did to Totchli," Bogo said, his voice low and full of a warning grumble, "Why should we believe you won't hurt the princess?"

"Is the princess part of my plans?" Nick asked, "That's the question you should be asking. And you're not going to know unless you hear me out."

Bogo's scowl deepened. As he and the queen seemed to consider Nick's words, Nick spoke in the same low undertone he had used when Judy first woke up, his lips not moving at all. "Arrest me."

"What?"

Judy couldn't help but blurt the word, and she winced internally. All eyes were suddenly on her, and Judy wildly improvised. "I mean, you can't trust this fox, sir. He's, uh, a liar. Who lies."

It was about the weakest cover for her mistake that Judy could come up with, but it didn't seem to faze Bogo or the queen. Nick, however, seemed to be biting his cheek to keep a perfectly straight face, and Judy got the feeling that if they ever got out of the mess they had found themselves in Nick would tease her more than a little. Which was perfectly fine in her eyes; if they somehow both lived and stopped Cerdo she'd be happy to let Nick say whatever he wanted.

"I know," the queen said gently, "But we don't seem to have much choice."

"That's right," Nick said, nodding his head, "I—"

With a supreme force of effort, Judy reached both of her arms up and seized him around either side of the head. Her energy seemed to be coming back, but her arms still felt twice as heavy as normal. Judy was dimly aware that she had something small and smooth and hard clenched in one fist—something like a stone, maybe—but she didn't have to let it go.

Nearly the instant she made contact with Nick's head, he made a loud yip and flopped forward as though Judy had the strength of two bulls. He somehow managed to tumble neatly until Judy was left straddling his back, his arms pinned beneath her. From the surprised looks on the faces of everyone watching, Judy hoped it had been a convincing performance and that no one thought about what it meant too carefully. Simply being a fox made Nick significantly larger and stronger than Judy could ever hope to be, and she knew she wasn't much of a burden when it came to her weight on his back.

"Commandant Totchli!" Bogo shouted, his voice echoing impressively and painfully across the stone walls, "By the gods, what were you thinking?"

"Ow! Ow, ow, ow!" Nick whimpered piteously, squirming slightly beneath Judy, "You're twisting my arm."

He looked backwards at her and, with a wink that no one else was at the right angle to see, mouthed one word.

 _Stone._

Judy slipped the object that had been in her paw—which was, she saw, a small philosopher's stone, the light it emitted lost in the glow that came from an elaborate alchemy array behind her—into Nick's as surreptitiously as she could manage. "I knew he had to be bluffing, sir," Judy said.

"I surrender," Nick declared, "Please, I surrender."

Bogo's scowl deepened. "That was very reckless, Commandant," he said.

"I know what he's capable of better than anyone," Judy said, and with considerable effort managed to stand upright, keeping Nick's arms behind his back as he also stood.

Mercifully, he seemed to have gotten a sense of how weary she felt, because he was subtly allowing her to support her own weight against his. With each passing minute, it felt as though more and more of her strength was returning, but however long she had spent lost in her own mind—which could have been days for all she knew—seemed to have drained her.

"I won't argue with the results, Lord Bogo," the queen said, and she nodded at him.

Bogo sighed, pulling a torc from an interior pocket of his uniform. "Let's get this over with," he said, seemingly mostly to himself, before adding in a louder and sterner tone something specifically intended for Nick, "Don't try anything."

Nick bowed his head, which Judy supposed might have given someone else the impression that he was appropriately resigned to his fate. She, however, took the opportunity to whisper something back up to him as Bogo approached slowly with an impressive degree of caution. "That's one of Cerdo's torcs."

Nick nodded subtly. Judy's mind raced, trying to consider the possibilities. "Do you have a plan?" she asked as quietly as she could manage.

His shoulders moved almost imperceptibly in a shrug. Judy thought as hard as she could as Bogo continued his careful approach. Nick had a philosopher's stone, but he also wouldn't want to hurt the queen or the princess or any of the guards. There wasn't much room to maneuver, and if Bogo could put one of Cerdo's torcs around Nick's neck then it was all over for him; it'd allow Bogo to control him. Unless...

An idea struck Judy like a bolt of lightning. "Be ready to break that array and run," she whispered.

Maybe she wasn't thinking things through carefully enough, but she thought she might just have a way to extricate them all from the mess they were in.


	72. Chapter 72

Every single instinct Bogo possessed, honed from decades of work as a member of the City Guard, was telling him that something was terribly wrong. He had been involved in hostage negotiations before—rarely, it was true, but he had done them before—and he had a sort of idea of what mammals were like when they were pushed to their ragged edge. He held nothing but loathing for the sort of mammal who would, when faced with arrest, would grab an innocent and threaten them with violence. It tended to be either a random stranger, simply unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or a member of the perpetrator's family. Those situations were the worst, easily among the most haunting of scenes he had been forced to bear witness to. Watching a parent panting frantically as they held a knife in one trembling paw to the throat of a tearful child, with his own heart in his throat as he attempted to de-escalate, had always left him feeling utterly exhausted even though he had never failed. The emotion of those moments were always so intense that the world afterwards seemed utterly drab, as though feeling things so intensely had temporarily stopped his ability to feel anything at all.

That was how it should have been, watching the fox attempt to talk his way out of arrest.

But it hadn't been. The fox had seemed almost dangerously calm and rational, as though it was _Bogo_ who wasn't in control of the situation with a number of highly trained guardsmammals backing him up. But then Commandant Totchli had acted—with a recklessness that told him that no matter her potential she still had a lot to learn about being an effective member of the City Guard—and subdued the alchemist. The queen was happy, of course, that her daughter was out of danger, but Bogo knew that whatever he said she'd never understand how near a thing it had been. Totchli might understand one day, particularly if she eventually reached the point that too many of Bogo's colleagues from his younger days had. All of those arrogant young ensigns and lieutenants—and Bogo had been one of them once, he had to admit—who acted as though everything would always work out in their favor would eventually learn a hard truth. No matter how clever or strong or lucky they were, there would always be a criminal out there who was more so. And, when they finally met that criminal, the officer would have to figure out how to live with themselves afterwards. Some of them went back to the job, humbled and a little wiser. Some of them quit. And some of them seemed determined to not learn anything, as though their failure had not been their fault at all.

As Bogo walked forward, the torc intended for the fox in his hoof, he decided he ought to have a talk with Totchli afterwards. Maybe she'd be one of those rare officers who could learn from the mistakes of others. Maybe, just maybe, she'd listen to him if he sat her down and tried explaining his thoughts. He'd understand if she didn't, though. Everything seemed to have worked out for her, and her instincts probably weren't telling her to be wary the way his were.

With each step he took closer, that uneasy feeling seemed to grow stronger and stronger. And yet, at the same time, it was as though there was a voice whispering in his ear not to worry. As long as he followed his orders, everything would work out. "Don't move," Bogo ordered the fox, once he had gotten close enough to touch him.

"No sir," the fox said, and considering his previous bravado he seemed appropriately humbled.

There had been _something_ about his previous words, though. Hearing the fox claim he had been part of a conspiracy involving Lord Cerdo had been particularly ridiculous, but still, there was a part of him... No. Bogo mentally shook the thought aside, trying to banish it. It was bad enough that his focus had a tendency to drift; it would be far worse if his loyalty did too. Not that he wasn't loyal to Cerdo, of course.

That thought seemed almost to itch at Bogo's brain, like a troublesome insect biting a spot he couldn't scratch, and he tried once more to regain his resolve. Everything was almost over. All he had to do was bring the fox and the princess—who was, at least, being no trouble at all—back to Cerdo and his worries would end. Cerdo would activate the alchemy array and that would do it. Bogo couldn't understand why he had even entertained the idea that the fox had created the array; obviously it had been Cerdo's work. But it was as though that memory had slipped beyond his notice until his thoughts had been drawn back to it, and Bogo repressed a sigh. It really was time to retire.

He reached out with both paws, preparing to place the torc around the fox's neck, and then the alchemist suddenly twisted in Totchli's grasp. He threw himself backwards, flopping over the rabbit's head even as she helplessly tumbled with him due to how she was holding his arms, and managed to wrench one arm free. As the fox's fingers grazed the dusty ground, Bogo threw himself forward, trying to be positioned to shield the queen. The more reasonable part of his mind told him that it was quite likely that this wouldn't do anything, but he had to at least try.

Contrary to his expectations, though, there wasn't a giant fireball or a cloud of high-speed needles or any of the other myriad ways an alchemist could attack. There was, instead, only the briefest of flashes of red light, but it wasn't nearly enough of a distraction.

Although the fox had grabbed a dazed-looking Totchli and was running full-tilt for the tunnel's exit, long practice and an agility that most criminals never expected both worked in Bogo's favor. The fox's feint as he tried evading Bogo's grasp was almost clumsily obvious, and Bogo easily snatched him up in one hoof.

It meant, unfortunately, that the alchemist dropped Totchli, who hit the ground in what looked to be a somewhat painful fashion, but Bogo doubted she was seriously hurt. For one brief moment, Bogo thought he might have even acted fast enough to prevent whatever the fox had tried. But then, as he roughly forced the torc around the alchemist's neck despite how the much weaker mammal tried pushing it away, something happened.

With an enormous cracking noise, a thin fissure suddenly spread from where the fox had touched the ground and into the alchemy array that had been behind him. The gritty dust coating the ground streamed into the newly formed crevasse, which had peculiarly metallic-looking sides, which flowed in a nearly mesmerizing fashion. Bogo nearly forgot about the fox, pausing only long enough to bark a single order—"Stop moving"—before staring at what he had done.

The fox was as limp as a rag doll in his grasp as Bogo hauled Totchli back up to her feet, his eyes glued to the spreading damage. The sight was so strange it took him a moment to figure out what had happened, but once he saw it for what it was he couldn't help but be a little impressed. The very ground itself, in a triangular patch that was roughly half a foot wide where the fox had touched it and expanding to nearly eight feet wide where it crossed the alchemy array, had turned to quicksilver. The dust on top of the formerly solid stone hadn't been affected, and it seemed to float on top of the glossy silver-colored metal as it dripped downwards.

The triangular wedge of the tunnel's floor started tilting, and with a painfully loud grinding noise gave way, opening up a hole that led into a tunnel beneath the one they were in. Sluggish dribbles of quicksilver fell to the floor below, barely visible in the dust cloud that had been kicked up by the floor's partial collapse. The tunnel itself, however, seemed quite stable; the floor that had been the ceiling of the tunnel below had been nearly two feet thick, and the missing chunk seemed barely significant compared to what remained. The alchemy array that the wedge-shaped hole had opened across, however, had not escaped unscathed.

There wasn't only a section of it missing; the light it had burned with was entirely gone, leaving only intricate carvings. The chunk of floor that had carried a piece of the array away with it had shattered as it hit the floor of the tunnel below, and through the slowly dissipating haze of dust Bogo could see fragments of the array across dozens of different pieces, none of them much larger than his head and most far smaller.

Bogo's gut tightened as he looked at the damage. No one had been hurt, or had even lost their footing, but the alchemy array had been utterly ruined. "Nicholas!" he said, hauling the fox up by the scruff of his neck to look him dead in the eye, "You _will_ obey my orders. Say it."

It was perhaps a bit superfluous a test to make, since the fox had gone completely limp when Bogo had ordered him to, but it was still gratifying to hear him say, in a voice utterly devoid of insolence, "I will obey your orders."

"Fix the alchemy array," Bogo ordered.

"I can't," the fox replied, "No idea how to."

Bogo scowled, mulling over his options. "We'll have to just take him to Cerdo," the queen said, and Bogo couldn't come up with any other possible path forward.

Still, as he marshaled the group together, the princess seeming exceedingly nervous or perhaps simply shaken up from what she had gone through, Bogo wondered if there was something he was missing.


	73. Chapter 73

In stories, the heroes always won.

Princess Isabel had not grown up on stories alone, of course. Her tutors had done their best to drill the often harsh and uncaring truth of the world into her mind; just because no one had ever successfully overthrown a monarch since Oveja I had crowned himself did not mean it would always be so. Mammals had tried, Oztoyehuatl most famously of all, even if none had ever succeeded.

That was not to say that members of the royal family always lived a full life. Isabel's own father had quite possibly been poisoned, and it didn't take much of a look down the family tree engraved on the doors to the throne room in the palace to find the names of princes and princesses who had died in accidents that were simply tragic rather than suspicious.

But some part of Isabel, some part of her that she supposed might simply be something childish she would have to shed, had always assumed that _she_ would be different. Maybe it was arrogance or naivete, but there was something comforting in the notion that the gods would watch out for her and keep her safe. Even without ever being directly told it, Isabel knew how fortunate she had been to be born into the royal family; by virtue of her birth alone she would inherit a kingdom of breathtaking scope. Surely that suggested some kind of favor, no matter how the princess told herself she ought to be more pragmatic. But there was a truth even harsher than the ones her tutors had instructed her in that Isabel was slowly realizing.

The gods could be terribly capricious with those they favored and those they did not.

Cerdo had, quite simply, won. Nicholas might have briefly inconvenienced him, but the fight had gone out of the fox entirely ever since Lord Bogo had placed that awful torc around his neck. It was creepy, seeing him suddenly so cheerfully obedient; every time she had seen Nicholas speak before the princess had gotten the feeling that he didn't feel any particular deference to authority. And as for Commandant Totchli...

Isabel hoped that the rabbit was simply playing along, and whatever bit of mental alchemy Nicholas had attempted had actually worked. The raw and unbridled loathing had vanished from Totchli's face. Or it seemed to have done so, at least. Maybe it was just wishful thinking on her part. It would be awfully convenient, after all, if Isabel didn't have to do anything to get herself to squash Cerdo's plans. Nicholas had been converted to the pig's side, but perhaps Totchli was now working alone.

It was almost comforting, if she didn't face the facts.

If Totchli _was_ simply faking her allegiance, whatever she was planning didn't seem to be going very well. When Nicholas had briefly twisted free and damaged the massive alchemy array, Isabel hadn't been able to help the nearly overwhelming sense of relief that had bubbled up inside her. Surely the two mammals were working together and doing something wonderfully clever.

But then Bogo had caught Nicholas and placed a torc around his neck, and Totchli had done nothing to stop it.

As disappointing as it was, Isabel told herself that she was suddenly and horribly alone despite being in a tunnel filled with mammals. Everyone else must have surely been bent to Cerdo's will; although Isabel expected a great deal of loyalty out of members of the City Guard, she thought the wolves who had accompanied Bogo were _too_ loyal. It was almost as though they were sleepwalking, blissfully unaware of the significance of events playing out before them.

That Lord Bogo and all the officers of the City Guard present (including Totchli and Nicholas) had been forced into unquestioning obedience was bad. That Isabel's mother was just as blindly loyal to the pig was even worse. It made Isabel's skin crawl beneath her woolly fur to see her mother so placid, so horribly and utterly off. It was as though the mammals standing before her wasn't her mother at all but a crude copy of her. Everything that had made the queen what she was had been scrubbed away and replaced with a shallow copy. It was like the difference between a solid gold bar and a lead bar coated in the precious metal.

And worse, that same fate awaited Isabel herself. Her knees had nearly buckled as she came to that realization that the fox and the rabbit couldn't help her. Simply staying upright had been a tremendous force of will, and she had no idea what to do. If she had been Nicholas, perhaps she could have unleashed a dazzling display of alchemy and fled to come up with a clever plan. If she had been Totchli, perhaps she could have slipped past all the guards, showing off an incredible aptitude with her sword if any guardsmammal got too close.

But Isabel was neither one of them.

Her knowledge of alchemy was far too shallow to try anything and she was at best mediocre with a sword. No matter what she tried, the end result would be the same. She would fail, and then she would be caught. All she could accomplish would be to delay the inevitable, and what good was that? This wasn't like a game of patolli, where a bold and desperate strategy was always worth trying if her opponent had a dominating lead. That, after all, was just a game, and sometimes Macuilxōchitl favored the losing player. In a real confrontation, though, it hardly seemed worth it.

An icy claw of despair grasped at Isabel's heart, and she could feel her paws trembling as Lord Bogo and her mother turned their attention to her. If their gazes had been cold and blank it might have been easier to bear, but it was as though there was still some kind of love there. Maybe just the imitation of it, or maybe the real thing buried beneath the awful force the torcs had, but it was still there.

"I have a new torc for you, Princess Isabel," Bogo said, and his tone was blandly polite.

He might as well have been telling her that the weather was good, and he held out the piece of jewelry as though it was of no special importance. "You have to put it on, dear," Isabel's mother said, giving her an encouraging smile, "And then we can all go back to Cerdo and everything will be fine."

Isabel's heart pounded in her ears even as her hooves seemed frozen to the tunnel floor. There didn't seem to be anything she could do; could she possibly bring herself to attack Lord Bogo? Even knowing that he wasn't himself, Isabel wasn't sure she could. And if she did, could she actually _hurt_ him? He was so much larger and more experienced that it didn't seem particularly likely.

Isabel's eyes darted around the tunnel, trying to spot anything she could do, but no options jumped out at her. Her mother was still smiling encouragingly. The wolves were standing respectfully at attention. Captain Nicholas, his face seeming almost unrecognizable with his usual expression gone, was simply looking at her, as was Commandant Totchli.

And Bogo was still walking toward her.

But then suddenly, moving with a surprising speed, Captain Nicholas interposed himself between her and the buffalo. "Allow me, Captain General," Nicholas said, stretching out one paw, "It'd be my honor to help and try to make up for the trouble I've caused."

His voice sounded horribly sincere and earnest, and Bogo hesitated only briefly. "Please," the fox said, "Let me prove where my loyalties are."

"Very well."

Bogo's words seemed to seal Isabel's fate as he gave the torc over, and Captain Nicholas walked the rest of the way to where she stood. Isabel couldn't help but close her eyes, no matter how shameful it felt. A princess ought to be brave, but she couldn't bear to watch. "Everything will be fine," she heard him say, and then the torc was around her neck.

Isabel didn't feel any different, which was terrifying in its own way. She _knew_ her mind was no longer her own, but there had been no apparent change. "You'll obey any order Lord Bogo or the queen gives you," Nicholas said, and Isabel could feel her heart sink even as she opened her eyes.

She hadn't expected to feel so normal. It would have been kinder, in a way, had he also ordered her to believe in their cause. Isabel knew she didn't want to obey the commands that were essentially coming to her from Cerdo, but it simply felt futile to resist them. What was the point in doing so? "Y—Yes," Isabel said, and Nicholas winked at her.

He probably meant it to be comforting, but Isabel felt filled by dread instead. "Come on, then," the queen said, gesturing toward the end of the tunnel, "Let's get out of this awful place."

Isabel seemed to have far too much time, alone with her thoughts, as the party made its way back the way everyone had traveled. The guardsmammals had surrounded her and her mother, who was walking close by and seemed quite glad of it. The thought of what had happened to her mother robbed her closeness of any kind of support, and Isabel didn't dare speak. No one else did, either, and Isabel almost wished someone would break the silence. With every step, she hoped something would happen. An intercession by the gods, perhaps, or the unexpected arrival of someone willing to help. The shocking revelation that Nicholas and Totchli had managed to fool Bogo would have been especially welcome, but of course it did not happen.

The opportunities for an alternate ending seemed to dwindle in Isabel's mind as they drew ever closer to the exit, and the feeble light of hope in her chest grew ever weaker. To Isabel, she thought she understood what it must feel like for a mammal to walk to their own execution, knowing that it was coming and clutching at straws for how it might be avoided. It had to be what all mammals thought at some point or another; surely the gods would realize that they were making a terrible mistake and she was too important and special to be allowed to die.

But that was a foolish thought. A childish one. Desperate ideas filled Isabel's head. She _had_ been ordered to go meet Cerdo, but no one had specifically told her not to attack him. Could she possibly try? Surely he wouldn't be so overconfident as to overlook the possibility, but maybe, just maybe...

Maybe all it would accomplish would be to get herself killed, or perhaps to be put under an even more oppressive command. But her resolve seemed to come back to her. As she ascended back into the world above ground—which seemed so much larger and full of possibilities than the world below—Isabel knew what she had to do. It was her last, most desperate hope, but perhaps she could cut the head off the snake that had wound itself around the throne before it bit her.

As she was led from the crevasse in the earth to Phoenix itself, a sort of calmness had settled over Isabel. Not perfect calm, by any means—her heart was still pounding—but as her fingers tightened and loosened over her weapon she seemed to have a sense of purpose. She would succeed or she would fail, but either way she would try rather than going helplessly to her fate. She said a silent prayer to the gods as, with a terrible swiftness, she found herself before the door that would lead to Cerdo.

The guards on either side of it sharply saluted and bowed before opening it wide, and the guardsmammals around her spread out a bit, the group reorganizing slightly so that Nicholas and Totchli were standing behind her. And then she heard something.

Nicholas had breathed two words into her ear, two words spoken so softly that they almost felt like her own thoughts rather than something from outside her head. Tension seemed to drain out of her chest, and Isabel relaxed ever so slightly as hope bubbled up where the anxiety had been. The words Nicholas had spoken had been short and to the point, but even without knowing what he was thinking she felt confident that he and Commandant Totchli could somehow pull a heroic victory out of nowhere. She could, Isabel thought, act _with_ them rather than alone.

"Not yet," he had said, and nothing more.

But as they were escorted into the building in Phoenix Cerdo had made his own, they were enough.


	74. Chapter 74

It was, quite simply, not in Judy's nature to give in to despair. It couldn't be. Years of always having to prove herself meant that there was no time for it. There was always the next challenge to face, and when life knocked her down there was nothing to do but get up again and keep trying. And yet, when the half-baked plan she and Nick had tried seemed to have utterly failed, Judy had felt her heart fall.

She would keep trying, she knew that. But she also knew that her odds of succeeding alone were particularly grim. Throughout the long walk back to Phoenix, and to where Cerdo had set himself up, there had been a nearly deathly silence, none of the mammals she was traveling with saying so much as a word. Judy had tried catching Nick's eye, but the chance never presented itself, and the risk of being found out seemed far too terrible. Worse, no matter how much she thought on it, she had no idea what she would do if Nick simply turned on her then and there.

With each passing step, with the confrontation growing ever closer, her thoughts seemed to speed up as though she had consumed a particularly potent quauhxicalli. Ideas presented themselves so fast that they weren't even thoughts anymore, just vague impressions and images flashing through her mind at a nearly dizzying pace.

None of them seemed promising.

But despite it all, when the doors to what Cerdo had made his temporary throne room opened to admit her, Judy felt weirdly calm. Other mammals tended to expect a rabbit to lose her head in a crisis, but that had never been a problem for her. It certainly _felt_ like on such a momentous occasion she ought to be feeling some kind of unease. She was, after all, about to confront the pig behind a sinister plot to enslave the entire kingdom to his will and she didn't really have a plan. But Nick was still on her side.

She hoped.

If she was wrong about that, she was probably doomed to failure. But before the doors had opened, she had heard him whisper two words to the princess. "Not yet."

And with that, everything seemed to have changed. It had to mean that Nick was still _her_ Nick, not some helpless puppet of Cerdo's. What he had done was suddenly so obvious that she felt a little ashamed that she hadn't noticed it before. For all she had gotten to know Nick, for all she could see what other mammals couldn't, she had missed it.

Or perhaps not missed it, but underestimated him. Nick had been carrying a philosopher's stone, after all, and had touched the torc Bogo had put around his neck before it went on. He must have broken the alchemy of the torc in much the same way he had broken the far larger alchemy array inscribed in the tunnels, albeit in a far less flashy way. Everything beyond that moment, then, had been nothing more than acting.

If she was right.

If Judy was wrong, then events had played out in exactly the fashion in which they had seemed to. Her efforts to save Nick had failed, and she was left to try one last gamble on her own to save the entire kingdom. But as she walked into the room Cerdo had claimed, she didn't think she was wrong. After all, if Nick really was being controlled by a torc, surely he would have told Bogo that Judy herself was still free. Or maybe not. It'd be amazingly petty of him, but somehow the idea of Nick actually being on Bogo's side and cheerfully withholding useful information didn't seem entirely out of character.

Still, that seemed less and less likely as she drew closer to where Cerdo was seated. Nick had trusted her to figure it out on her own, and she had. Whether he had any kind of plan of his own was another question entirely, and Judy vowed to pay as close attention as possible. If an opportunity presented itself, she'd have to seize it as quickly as possible.

With that in mind, Judy considered the building that Cerdo had taken as his temporary headquarters, which was in his mind probably the last stop before the palace itself in Zootopia was his. The building seemed to be a guildhall, and a rather impressive one at that. The main area was much longer than it was wide, the floor made of polished stone with the guild emblem—a somewhat abstract version of Xiuhcoatl, the serpentine god's body wrapped around an atlatl—set into the center of the floor in turquoise and gold. Matching pillars ran along the longer walls, supporting a vaulted ceiling from which tiny alchemical torches gave the impression of the stars in the night sky, as though the roof had been peeled away. Closer to the floor, larger alchemical torches had been concealed to fill the main area with a diffuse and gentle light like a perpetual near-dawn.

The room had no windows, which struck Judy as perhaps the reason Cerdo had chosen it, besides its obvious grandeur; even with all the control and power he held he must have been afraid of attack. There seemed to be only one way in or out, which was the door they had entered through; although they had passed through a grand lobby with a number of other doors the room itself was far more secure. Judy suspected, though, that there might be one or more hidden doors intended for the use of servants, and she scanned the walls carefully as the group continued their approach.

The walls themselves had been draped with elegantly embroidered banners, each of them depicting the same seal as the one on the floor, except behind Cerdo where the flag of Oztoyehuatl the Betrayer proudly hung. He had, naturally enough, set himself up at the far end of the room, and where once the guildhall had likely held many long tables intended for the guild to hold meetings and debate business, all but one of them had been removed. The one remaining table, which Cerdo sat at as though it was a desk, was stacked high with papers through which the pig was rummaging, apparently unconcerned with his visitors.

But then, Judy supposed that he had reason to be confident in his safety, because he hadn't been alone. Two dozen guardsmammals stood at rigid attention along the walls, their armor and their weapons gleaming in the light, and Judy didn't like the odds of taking them all on at once. To a mammal, they were all tall and powerfully built, including a gaur even taller than Bogo and considerably younger, her body rippling with muscle. Indeed, even the shortest of the guards was taller than Judy herself was, and she reminded herself that it wasn't just the guards before her that they'd have to deal with. There were also the ones that had followed Bogo and the queen down into the tunnels, as well as Bogo and the queen themselves.

Compared to that, all she had to rely on was herself, Nick, and whatever aid the princess could give.

Before she could consider the problem any further, though, Bogo cleared his throat, which made Cerdo finally look up from his work. "Ah, back already Lord Bogo?" he asked, a smile crossing his face, "Marvelously done. I think we've spent enough time in Phoenix, don't you?"

Bogo nodded and then spoke. "There was trouble," he said, and although to Judy's ears his voice sounded carefully neutral she wondered if some part of him, buried deep under Cerdo's control, delighted in giving him the news.

Cerdo stood up, running his hooves across his head as he did so with a sigh. "Of course there was," he said, "Report."

Judy stood carefully at attention as she listened to Bogo blandly rattle off the relevant details, trying to avoid doing anything that would attract Cerdo's notice. She wasn't sure she actually needed to bother—the pig's attention seemed to have been completely absorbed by listening to Bogo—but she considered where she was standing. Bogo, unfortunately, had stopped about twenty feet short of Cerdo's desk, and so she had done the same, sandwiched between him and the guards who had followed him.

It might as well have been two hundred feet.

The simplest option—and Judy would freely admit that when push came to shove she often defaulted to the simplest option—would be to launch herself across the room and strike out at Cerdo. But the way the room was set up didn't seem to make that a particularly winning strategy; the table Cerdo was standing behind was so large that after crossing the distance separating her from it she'd have to jump up on it first before she had a shot at Cerdo. She'd lose precious seconds in the process, and from how the pig's guards stood at rapt attention Judy wasn't sure the time she'd have would be enough. And so, despite the fact that her every instinct cried for action, Judy did what was hardest for her.

She waited.

When Bogo had come to the end of his recitation, Cerdo sighed again and slumped down into his chair. Before, he had sat in it as though it was a throne, but now his posture had degraded significantly as though he was especially weary. "Why?" he asked, "Why does no one see that it's for the best?"

No one answered, and Cerdo turned to Bogo. "Order them to obey me," he said, gesturing at Nick and the princess, and the buffalo instantly did.

Cerdo turned his attention to Nick, considering him carefully with beady little eyes. "Why, fox?" he asked, "Why did you do it? You must have known it'd be futile. I don't even need the array in Phoenix anymore, not really. It was a useful model, but it's already served its purpose as a test. You must know my plan, surely? How could you have possibly been against it?"

The pig was speaking in a tone of long-suffering irritation, a scowl darkening his pudgy jowls. He didn't seem to want to give Nick time to actually answer, because he kept talking, his voice becoming pleading. "Can't you _see_ that what I'm working for is true freedom? True equality? There won't be any more crime. There won't be any more prejudice. No one will _care_ that you're a fox. Everything will be perfect!"

Cerdo slammed a thick hoof against the table, sending some of his papers scattering. As some of them drifted in the air, Judy saw that they were covered with alchemical patterns of incredible complication, the pages printed with so many interlocking lines and curves that at first glance they almost looked to be one solid color.

The pig panted, his fat torso moving like a bellows as he caught his breath after his outburst. For a long moment he simply looked at Nick, who Judy chanced a glance at. His face was a perfect mask. _The_ perfect mask, in fact; the one that Judy recognized as the face Nick presented to the world as his way of keeping everything at arm's length.

"I didn't want you to win," Nick said at last, with a shrug.

"That's what it all comes down to, isn't it?" Cerdo asked, "Winning and losing. Everyone only cares about their own selfish little goals. That's the way everyone thinks. If _he_ wins, _I_ lose. But there's finally a way to break that cycle. _Everyone_ can win."

Cerdo sighed again. "It's disappointing, but not unexpected, I suppose. It can change, though. Once my plan succeeds, mammals will finally start being better."

"If you say so," Nick said, and Cerdo nodded.

"I do say so," the pig said, "I do wish I could convince more mammals with words alone, but... It's my burden to bear."

Judy loathed his self-pitying tone, which showed how monstrous he really was. To Cerdo, the terrible cost he demanded of everyone else—their complete and utter obedience, without question—was the small price to pay for his goal. "But you _will_ help me win now," Cerdo said, "I can always use another alchemist, after all."

"It's my pleasure," Nick said, in what struck Judy as his most obsequious tone.

"Excellent," Cerdo replied, "And you will, of course, do anything I ask?"

"I'm yours to command," Nick said.

Cerdo snapped his fingers, and what happened next was so fast that it was over before Judy even realized what was going to happen. The guards standing behind her, Nick, and the princess had seized them, and Judy felt herself being bodily lifted with her arms pinned to her sides.

"That's a lie, I'm afraid," Cerdo said, "Did you _really_ think I wouldn't be able to tell you weren't under my control?"

"I _had_ kind of hoped," Nick replied, but Judy heard the fear in his voice he couldn't cover with his usual tone.

"Don't worry," said Cerdo as he stood up.

He placed three torcs on the table before him and nodded to the remaining guards, who approached and took them. "It won't be a lie for much longer."


	75. Chapter 75

Watching Cerdo's lackeys advance with torcs in their paws was pretty far from ideal, but Nick wasn't quite panicking. Not quite, at least. There was still a very slim chance that he was clinging to, which was always a bit of an uncomfortable feeling. He had always done his best, as a mostly legitimate mammal of business and not, to go for the sure things. It was far better, in Nick's mind, to go with what he knew would work and come back with a modest return rather than going for the riskier but more rewarding path.

It was a style that had worked pretty well for a reasonably long amount of time. All things considered, he had built a wonderfully stable and free life for himself, however much there was lurking in his past waiting to tear it all down. It made it sort of ironic, then, that if he failed now it wouldn't be one of those old ghosts that did so. It was even more ironic that failing would, in essence, mean getting everything he wouldn't have ever let himself dream of achieving. A position as an alchemist at the side of the leader of the kingdom would be about as far as it was possible to rise, with rewards far beyond anything he could hope to earn traveling from barony to barony and doing his work for hire.

Of course, achieving that position would mean losing control over his very mind, but still. A lot of mammals would happily make that trade. Nick wasn't one of them, though, and even as he tried to maintain his composure in the face of near certain doom, his mind was racing as he considered the best way to communicate what he needed to. His paws were a bit tied in terms of what he could actually do, though, and what happened in the next thirty seconds would probably decide the fate of the kingdom for years to come. If he gave away his idea too early, it'd certainly fail, and so Nick tried desperately to wear the right mask.

His usual smug and aloof look simply wouldn't work; Cerdo had proven himself to be a remarkably shrewd judge of mammals and would probably notice if Nick didn't appear to be acting suitably for the situation. Which was, Nick reminded himself as he tried putting his features into an appropriately dismayed and beaten look, pretty dire.

And then, with Cerdo watching over it all, the guard approaching Nick had gotten far enough to put a torc on him. Nick mentally made a prayer to the gods, hoping against hope that Cerdo's lack of specificity would work against him. Nick felt the cold metal going around his neck, nestled above the torc he already wore, and had to resist the urge to smile.

"The three of you will obey my commands," Cerdo said, and he gestured at the guards who had held Nick, Judy, and the princess aloft, "Put them down."

"Now that this nonsense is over," Cerdo said, busying himself shuffling through the papers on his desk, "It's time to see to the fate of the kingdom itself. The first order of business, of course, is going to be getting the alchemical array around all of Zootopia finished, and from there we can start planning the princess's marriage. I've started narrowing down the candidates who will most contribute to the stability of the kingdom, naturally, but I see no reason not to let the princess herself choose her favorite from them."

"That's very generous of you," the princess said, all but spitting the words.

She had her head held high, and despite the high note of fear in her voice was seemingly doing her best to stand strong to the last moment. It was kind of impressive, and yet at the same time it made Nick wince internally. It really wasn't the right time for defiance, however smart his own mouth might tend to be. Nick tried catching her eye without drawing attention to himself, but she seemed too entirely focused on Cerdo.

"It is," Cerdo agreed, "I _could_ simply force you to choose someone—even myself, were I that sort of mammal—but it's better this way. Nobler, I think. It's not about getting control for my own selfish ends, but for the good of the kingdom as a whole. It's about everyone's happiness, and that does include yours."

"I'll do whatever I can to fight you," the princess said, and her voice was trembling, "I will."

Nick couldn't blame her for thinking that he had failed in his own efforts and everything was up to her, but it didn't make it easier to watch. He almost had the perfect thing to say, and then Cerdo shook his head. "No, you won't," he said, "I order you not to."

Everything that happened afterwards seemed to happen all at once.

The princess had screamed the word "No!" with such an incredible depth of defiance that it hardly seemed possible to have come from her.

Cerdo's eyes widened as he began to realize something had gone terribly wrong with his plan.

Judy stole a belt's worth of quauhxicallis from the guard who had been restraining her.

Nick grabbed both torcs on his neck and ripped them off with one paw, pointing at Cerdo as he did so with his other, and shouted "Get his torc!"

What happened first was impossible to tell, and what followed was sheer chaos.

Cerdo yelled for the guards even as the princess snatched a sword from the belt of the closest guard and twisted out of reach, running for Cerdo. Judy was little more than a blur, bowling over the nearest guards and heading for the pig while Nick dropped to the floor and placed both his paws against it spread wide. Performing alchemy without a focus was much easier with a philosopher's stone, but Nick had used nearly all of the stone's power.

Nearly all wasn't the same thing as all, though, and the stones of the floor obeyed his command, cracking and heaving like a flower blooming. It was far from his best work as an alchemist—that would probably have to be what he had done to the torcs—but it did the job. Judy was scrambling across the altered ground, which rose and fell in a crazed topology, so quickly that it was as though it was completely flat.

Nick, for his part, tried to keep giving her an advantage, but even though the other members of the City Guard weren't nearly as agile as she was it wasn't long before one managed to grab him. "Get it on and tell everyone to stop!" Nick urged before a meaty arm caught him in the crook of a massive elbow.

Nick somehow wasn't surprised that it had been Bogo who managed to snag him, but at least the buffalo wasn't trying to rip him in half, which Nick had considered as a very real possibility. Still, it would have felt wrong to hurt mammals who weren't acting on their own free will, and he was glad that Cerdo was apparently genuine in his desire to avoid hurting others. Well, physically at least.

He watched, his heart pounding, as the princess was the next to be captured, hauled off the ground even as she threw her sword at Cerdo. She missed by a rather significant margin, but Nick could appreciate the fight left in her. That left Judy, and he couldn't help but admire how quickly she had gone along with his plan without even knowing the details.

Granted, he hadn't known the details until he had actually tried it; it had simply been a desperate last effort attempt when he converted the torcs meant to control them into anti-alchemy arrays. It would have been easier to simply make them inert, and wearing one meant he had basically handicapped his own ability to do alchemy, but as he watched Judy take a flying leap to snag the torc off from around Cerdo's neck, he had to admit it had worked almost as well as though he had actually planned it.

Even as Cerdo reached out in apparent horror, still not seeming to understand how he had been beaten, Judy stood up, the torc now around her own neck.

"Everyone stop!" Judy cried, and the room all but froze.

It might have been comical under other circumstances, as every mammal save Cerdo halted in the middle of whatever they had been doing. Mammals trying to get back on their feet stopped in place, and Nick could feel Bogo stiffening behind him.

Cerdo, as out of shape as he was, tried futilely lunging after Judy, stumbling on the heaved floor. "You can fix everything!" he pleaded, "It doesn't have to end like this! My plan is the only way, don't you see? You can't let it end. You can't! You have to let me work!"

"Seize him," Judy ordered, and the guards who had until recently been under his thrall grabbed the pig bodily.

"Wait a minute," Judy said, and Nick saw her pick up something from the floor.

It was, he saw, the torc Bogo had put around his own neck, the anti-alchemy array inside it still working. Judy had to stand on her tip-toes to get it around Cerdo's neck, where it barely fit; the pig's neck was significantly thicker. But it did fit, and it seemed like a reasonable precaution.

"Are you going to declare yourself queen now?" Cerdo sneered, "You want that power, don't you?"

Judy regarded him levelly for a moment, and Nick wondered what was going through her head. "No," she said at last, "I don't. Everyone, I want you to stop obeying any commands Cerdo gave you."

All of the mammals in the room stayed still for a moment, and Nick prompted her. "Or you," he said quietly.

"Oh!" Judy said, her ears shooting up, "Right. Yes. Me too. Stop obeying any commands I gave you."

Mammals started moving again, far more naturally than before, although the guards still had a now weeping Cerdo tightly secured. "Cerdo is still under arrest, though," the queen said, "Get him in the nearest cell that can contain an alchemist."

Nick exchanged a glance with Judy. "I... may have to go fix that," he said, remembering what they had done as they escaped Phoenix, and the queen nodded.

"Of course," she said, "But before you go, I must thank you for your service. And you as well, Commandant Totchli."

Judy bowed and Nick immediately followed suit, and when she said, "It was my honor to help, your majesty," Nick hastily repeated the words.

"Why don't you go with Captain Nicholas to see to the prisoner?" the queen said.

Judy eagerly agreed, but Nick lingered a moment longer, watching the queen and the princess as they approached each other and tightly embraced.

"What he offered wasn't freedom," the queen said quietly, "There are some changes we'll have to make, but not Cerdo's. What he did can never happen again."

"I have some ideas about that," the princess said, standing tall.

She sounded somehow older to Nick's ears than she had before, and Nick turned away as Judy walked over to where he was and pulled herself under his arm, cradling the top of her head against the bottom of his. Nick took in the scent of her, something that somehow still called to mind open farmland despite everything they had been through, and listened as the present and future rulers of Zootopia spoke.

He was only half-paying attention, no matter how valuable the information was; there were, after all, far more pressing things on his mind as he walked out of the room, Judy warm against him. There would, Nick was sure, be time enough for everything.

* * *

"So this is where you grew up?" Nick asked, taking in the sight before him.

The castle—no matter what Judy called it, that's what it looked like to him—loomed in front of them, somehow managing to be both imposing and homey at the same time. It looked built more for comfort than for defense, all neat and solid stone with a layer of ivy covering most of the walls and moving gently in the breeze.

At his side, Judy nodded, but as he looked down at her he saw the look that had come into her eyes. Something not quite sad, but in about the same neighborhood. He didn't have to ask, but he did anyway. It was, he told himself, what a good boyfriend would do. "He said that too, didn't he?" Nick asked quietly, and Judy nodded again.

There was no question as to what it meant when her ears drooped slightly, and Nick could certainly understand her mixed feelings. In the months that had passed since the final confrontation with Cerdo, Judy had told him, as best as she could manage, about her experience with the other Nick, the one who had existed only briefly and then only in her head. Judy had confessed, once, that it felt strange to mourn someone when he was also still around, but Nick had known what she meant. That Nick, who had sacrificed himself to save her, was gone for good. However short his existence had been, he had been his own fox, and it was a little touching that Judy still wished it hadn't happened. It was, Nick thought, one of the sure signs of how much Judy cared.

It was one of the things he loved about her. And when Judy looked up at him, her expression brightening, he saw one of the other things. She was moving on, in a way he never really had before meeting her. It didn't mean that she was forgetting that other Nick—he was reasonably sure she never would—but she wasn't going to keep dwelling on it.

She looked from him to the seat of Totchli Barony, a smile touching her face. "I'll show you around," she said, "Everyone's going to love you."

Judy had said almost exactly the same thing before, on their way to the barony, and Nick put on his most charming smile, as he had before. "Well of course they will," Nick said, tenting his fingers on his chest, "The life of the party, that's me."

Judy rolled her eyes, nudging him in the chest. There was a faint metallic ringing as she did, which Nick was still getting used to. The armor of a member of the City Guard still didn't quite feel right, even after months of wearing it. Sometimes, when he looked at the gleaming breastplate in the mornings before putting it on, it didn't seem real. It made him feel almost like a fraud, like he was putting on a disguise or a costume rather than a uniform. But he wore it all the same, and it was starting to feel almost natural.

Almost.

But staying in the City Guard, at least for just a little bit longer, felt right. More than that, it felt like he was doing the right thing, and Nick was enjoying the feeling. Continued membership wasn't without its downsides, but it wasn't without its perks, either.

As if she had been able to tell what he was thinking, Judy raised her fingers and brushed them against the emblem embossed on his breastplate over his heart. That was probably more different for Judy than it had been for Nick; he had barely worn the old uniform before the new ones were released.

The ones without an accompanying torc.

Nick sometimes saw Judy play with the fur of her own neck, running her fingers across it like she expected something more solid than the slim chain necklace she wore to be there no matter how often she did it and came away without the solid thickness of a torc. Sort of the same way a mammal used to wearing spectacles would sometimes gesture to push them up the bridge of their muzzle even when they weren't wearing them. The torcs were gone now—for good, if the queen was to be believed—and with that the emblem of the City Guard had been relocated onto the armor they all wore.

"You don't regret this?" Judy asked softly, her fingers still running over the knotted starburst pattern of the sigil.

Nick smiled down at Judy and caught her fingers in his. The fingers of a paw so similar to his own, paw pads and all. "I could ask you the same thing," he said, squeezing gently.

"You have," Judy said.

" _You_ have," Nick echoed.

There were two discussions they had both held, more than once. The queen had offered to have a court alchemist undo Nick's crude and desperate attempt to save Judy's life so that she could be entirely a bunny again rather than having a chimeric mixture with a fox. But that would have been a long and difficult and likely quite painful process, because the changes Nick had made were far more than skin deep. It wasn't just her arm, after all, but all the internal organs Nick had copied into her and integrated so thoroughly that it was almost as though they had always been there.

It almost felt like some kind of metaphor to Nick, but he didn't pursue the line of thought any further. All that mattered, in his mind, was that Judy had refused. She had given a practical reason first. It would likely take months of treatment, and for long stretches of it she'd be without an arm altogether and unfit for duty. The City Guard, after all, was still in desperate need of good mammals, especially considering its new mandate. But the other reason she had given, the more personal one, was an answer that Nick had echoed when it came to why he also stayed in the City Guard.

She liked it.

"No rest for the wicked, and all that," Nick said, entwining his fingers into hers as they continued their approach to the seat of Totchli Barony.

It was still too far away for him to make out the faces of the bunnies watching their approach from the many windows as anything other than blobs of white or gray or brown, but he could see them. And they, no doubt, could see what he and Judy were doing. But Judy, surely as aware as he was of their potential audience, didn't pull away from his touch or otherwise give any sort of sign that she minded.

"The queen doesn't expect us to do nothing but work, you know," Judy replied.

"Oh?" Nick asked, "Do my ears deceive me, or did Commandant Totchli say that there's more to life than working? I must be an awful influence, really."

Judy laughed, squeezing his fingers in hers until Nick could almost feel her pulse. "So you think it was a coincidence we were assigned to Totchli Barony together?"

"Mmm, I don't know," Nick teased, "Surely it was simply the logical decision. You know the barony better than any other officer, and I have it on pretty good authority that I'm a decent alchemist."

For all he joked, though, Nick knew she was right. The royal decree that torcs would no longer be used had been quite simple, as had been the deactivation of the alchemy that kept them working at the level of the kingdom. But ensuring that Cerdo hadn't left behind any sleeper agents was another thing altogether. It'd be the work of a lifetime, probably. More than that, Nick didn't know how they'd ever be sure that they were done. Cerdo had been, for all his faults, a cunning and meticulous planner. It didn't seem unreasonable to assume that he had foreseen the possibility that an accident might befall him before his plan had come to fruition and left behind someone to carry on his work in his place.

Or maybe that was simply paranoia. Cerdo had been a mammal, after all, not a god. He had failed because of what he couldn't foresee, no matter how clever he was. It'd probably be a better idea for Nick to treat their assignment to Totchli Barony—along with the support staff that was probably all set to meet them once they were formally received by Judy's parents—as a bit of a vacation. They had, at most, a month or two before they'd continue their circuit of the Middle Baronies before making their way inwards again.

"You're an excellent alchemist, Captain Flamel," Judy said, her tone completely genuine rather than full of the mock formality she could have used.

That was another change, and for Nick perhaps the hardest one to get used to. He had spent so long as simply Nicholas of the Middle Baronies that thinking of himself as Nicholas Flamel felt like even more of a put-upon than thinking of himself as a member of the City Guard. Of course, when the queen herself offered land and a title as a reward for services rendered, it would have been foolish to say no. Nick hadn't even set foot in Flamel Barony yet, which had been among Cerdo's holdings before the queen had split them up, but it sounded nice. Smaller than Totchli Barony by far, of course, just a modest holding in the Middle Baronies, but it was all his.

As far as rewards went, though, having Judy back was beyond anything he could have ever asked for, and while that was a particularly sappy thought Nick didn't particularly care. "Of course I am," Nick said, his smile widening.

They walked in silence for a bit longer, the castle growing ever larger as they made it further and further down the charming little road that led up to it. "Nick?" Judy asked suddenly.

"Yes?" he replied.

"Do you think someone will actually try it again? What Cerdo did, I mean."

The easy answer, of course, would have been to say no. To say that Cerdo had been an aberration, a mammal unique in his knowledge and drive and access to the power and money he needed to try. But it wouldn't have been an honest answer. Knowledge could certainly be lost—the wonders and horrors underneath Phoenix certainly attested to that much—but destroying it was a whole other matter. Even if Cerdo hadn't left an agent behind, someone else might discover what he had. Or, for that matter, that someone might come from beyond the kingdom itself, as Cerdo had pretended to do.

"Yes," Nick said, "Someone probably will. But it won't matter."

"Why not?" Judy asked, looking up at him.

His tone had been completely serious, and he knew she could tell. His sincerity was one of those things she loved about him. When he showed it, at least, which wasn't always easy. For Judy, though, he would always be willing to try.

"Because there are mammals like you," Nick said, and he could see her ears flushing ever so slightly at the warmth and care in his voice, "And I guess me, too."

"We aren't going to live forever, you know," she said, and Nick nodded.

"Well, sure," he said, "But as long as there are mammals after us who'll do the right thing, that's all it'll take."

It was a bit more optimistic than Nick was used to being, but it still felt right to say, and for another moment there was silence as Judy seemed to consider his words. "Nick?" Judy said, looking back up into his face, "Are you trying to tell me we should have kits?"

"I..." Nick stammered, "That is... I meant..."

Judy laughed, reaching up to grab either side of his muzzle and pulling it down until his head was on the same level as hers. "Lost for words?" she said, "That's rare."

Nick nodded; he would admit when she had him beat. It hadn't been even close to what he had meant, but hearing her say it...

The world seemed remarkably full of possibilities as she gave him a gentle kiss on the lips and then let go of his head. "We can talk about it later," she said, still smiling, and she pulled down on Nick's uniform tunic beneath his armor to straighten out a fold he hadn't noticed.

"Yeah," Nick said, and then he cleared his throat, regaining his composure, "Let's save that for later. Unless that's the first thing your parents are going to ask when they see me. _Is_ it going to be the first thing they ask?"

Judy sighed. "We'll see," she said, with something of a resigned air.

"Talking to your parents can't be any worse than taking on Cerdo," Nick said, smiling, "We'll get through it together."

Judy ran her paw around her neck again, catching the thin chain of her necklace and running her fingers along it until they came to the small golden carrot that hung from it. "Together," she agreed, and then she let the little ornament slip out of her grasp to grab Nick's paw again.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? I've held off on author's notes for quite a few chapters now, for a few different reasons. The first, and perhaps simplest, is that with a grand total of 75 chapters there simply were fewer and fewer things worth mentioning as the story neared its end. All the pieces had been set up and explained in the notes for earlier chapters, and there simply didn't seem like a need. Beyond that, the last sequence of chapters was sort of designed to flow one after the other, and I didn't want notes cluttering things up.

But there was one final reason for my reluctance to have author's notes, and I'll get to it momentarily. First, though, here are the points I figure are worth mentioning from this and previous chapters.

Xiuhcoatl was previously referenced very early in the story as a warrior; in chapter 74 we see also a reference to the name as a god, which reflects a bit of duality in terms of how things are seen for quasi-historical figures.

Nick and Judy did indeed do quite a number on the anti-alchemy cell in Phoenix, so it probably is for the best that he went to fix it.

Nick taking on the surname Flamel is, naturally, a reference to the historical alchemist Nicolas Flamel. Although Flamel might be well-known now for his importance to the plot of _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_ (or _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_ for my fellow Americans), he was an actual person. Amusingly enough, all Hermione would have had to do is crack open a decent Muggle encyclopedia to learn exactly who he was! In any case, though, the real Nicolas Flamel was a French scribe who was born around 1330 and died in 1418, although about two centuries after his death he developed a reputation for having secretly achieved immortality via alchemical means.

As previously established much earlier in the story, the little torc ornament Nick gave Judy was, for rabbits, something understood to be a sign of proposing. Although this chapter shows that torcs are no longer worn, this chapter shows that Judy has made her decision and is displaying it on a regular necklace instead.

There's one more reason I've held off on author's notes, and that's because I have an announcement I have very mixed feelings about. I've known this was coming for a long time now, and it was very difficult for me to figure out the best way to say it. But, here and now, at the end of the story, the time has definitely come for me to say it.

I've made the decision to go on hiatus from weekly updates for Zootopia stories. This was a very difficult decision for me, as I've greatly enjoyed participating in the fandom in my own small way, and I cannot say enough how much I've enjoyed having you, the reader, along for the ride. However, I've previously mentioned, in a few author's notes, my outlook on writing fan fiction as preparation for writing an original story.

I have, therefore, decided to stop posting Zootopia stories on a weekly basis so that I can focus on an original work. I'm very excited by this original project of mine, which I can honestly say is also some of the most fun I've had writing and really represents an attempt by me to bring my writing to that next, higher level.

It is, however, not solely my work, as I have a partner in all of this. I am very excited to officially announce that TheWyvernsWeaver and I are working together on an original work with no connection whatsoever to Zootopia.

Weaver and I first started talking a bit more than a year ago, when he did a fantastic bit of fan art for my first ever Zootopia story as an incredible gift. He's a wonderful artist, and you may have seen his work in the Zootopia fandom before for _Sunderance_ , which he has been illustrating.

Through our conversations together, we found a shared desire to create something new, and I am very happy to announce that we've set up a website for it:

 **LastFables . com** (get rid of the spaces to go there; unfortunately FanFiction won't allow me to include a direct link)

 _Last Fables_ is a work of anthropomorphic fantasy, featuring an original setting and cast of characters that Weaver and I developed together. I'm writing the story and he's doing the accompanying illustrations, and I can hardly wait to be able to share more details! We'll use the website as the location for future announcements, the first of which will come soon, so if you like my writing or Weaver's art I'd encourage you to check it out.

But while it is very exciting to be working on this project, it's also sad to be leaving behind my weekly Zootopia story updates. I think I had a good run, going from September of 2016 all the way up to February of 2020 without missing a single week. It's been a long time, and a lot of chapters, and it's been a wonderful learning experience. I like to think that I'm a better writer now than I was when I started, and a lot of that is thanks to you as a reader.

I greatly, deeply, and sincerely appreciate everyone who has read my work, and especially those who have commented on it. Working in the Zootopia fandom has been enormously rewarding for me, and I've met a number of fantastic people in the process. It was a very difficult decision for me to decide to stop posting on a weekly basis, but I've decided that _Last Fables_ needs my full attention as a writer in order to come to life.

Still, I would like to emphasize that this is a hiatus, not a full stop. My appreciation of Zootopia and its fandom hasn't lessened, and if Disney releases a Zootopia 2 I'll be seeing it on opening night without any question! I will be back for future Zootopia stories, I can promise that much, such as one-shot works. Both because it'll help me sort of play around with ideas and because I genuinely love the characters and the setting and I can't bear to set them fully aside. I can also still be found on a couple Zootopia-related Discords, and I'm always happy to respond to questions I get there or through PMs.

In closing, therefore, I want to say thank you again. As a reader, you've made the effort that I've put into my Zootopia stories worthwhile, and I cannot thank you enough for that. As always, if you're so inclined as to comment, I'd love to hear what you think!


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